The president-elect has his doubts about Russian hacking. What are his motives?
The most innocent reading of these comments is that Mr. Trump is seeking to flatter his Russian counterpart into a cooperative relationship, much as George W. Bush and Mr. Obama sought to do in the early days of their presidencies.
.. they raise the possibility that his desire for a better relationship is shaping his attitude toward the intelligence
.. This is called politicizing intelligence, and it’s reprehensible whether done in the service of starting a war or passing a treaty.
.. It isn’t a secret that the Trump Organization has long been entwined with Russian business interests: “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of our assets,” Donald Trump Jr.
told a real-estate conference in 2008. It isn’t a secret that Mr. Trump’s campaign was curiously studded by figures with deep business ties to Russian or pro-Russian figures, including Paul Manafort, Rick Gates and Carter Page. It isn’t a secret that businessmen from Russia and other former Soviet states have been
major investorsin marquee projects such as the Trump Soho in New York and the Trump hotel in Toronto.
.. he can begin by telling us what he knows about his Russia ties that the rest of us still don’t.