“I think it didn’t matter who Clinton’s opposition was. They just wanted to sew chaos in America, at least that’s what the prevailing thought was after the Facebook inquiry.”
What is interesting to point out to people, especially those who really and truly believe that Russia wanted Trump, is that Clinton should have actually been their preferred candidate. Why? Because Trump was promising during the campaign to do two things that would have the same effect on Russia presently as Ronald Reagan did in the 1980s, and which resulted in the destruction of the Soviet Union. Those things were to massively increase the production of oil and natural gas, and to massively increase spending on national defense.
During the 1980s, we could not massively increase energy production, but the Saudis could. Reagan and his CIA director, Bill Casey, arranged for us to guarantee the safety of the Saudi regime, and to sell them massive amounts of sophisticated weaponry, in return for them massively boosting oil production. The Saudis held to their end of the bargain, by increasing production from about two and a half million barrels a day to nearly 12 million barrels a day, all within six months. The effect of this on energy prices was quite predictable and dramatic, as oil fell to $8 a barrel at one point in 1986. This choked off the foreign currency earnings of the Soviet Union, which badly hurt their economy. Of course we all know about Reagan’s massive defense build up, but the flip side of that was that the Soviet Union was forced to do the same thing to try to stay even, when its economy couldn’t even afford the level of spending that they had before Reagan came into office.
So if the Russians actually believed that they could have a big impact Upon Our election, you have to ask yourself whether they were crazy, or whether it is the people in this country who are so desperately opposed to Donald Trump that they will believe ANYTHING, no matter how preposterous, if they believe that it would hurt him. Trump was, as mentioned supporting these policies, and has actually implemented them. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, was promising to continue Obama’s policy of choking off further exploration for fossil fuels, and shutting down the coal industry altogether, and made no mention whatsoever of a large defense build up. On top of that, I could virtually guarantee that Vladimir Putin has a detailed file on the entire Uranium One matter sitting in his desk in the Kremlin. So if you’re Vladimir Putin and the Russian leadership, and you are faced with two candidates for the American presidency, one of whom is promising to implement policies that will destroy your nation’s economy, and the other of whom is promising the opposite and, as a bonus, you can blackmail that second candidate, which one of those two candidates would you support? One need not be a Nobel Prize winning theoretical physicist to figure that one out. However, it seems that about half of the people in this country have an IQ below 30 on this issue.
All good, but again, the Russian rationale is not economic or political, it is deep seated psychological resentment of the American republic and electoral tradition as a whole, which would be there regardless of who was running.
The Kremlin has a vested interest in diminishing the appeal of democracy for the sake of self-preservation. They fear the prospect of their own people rising up in demand of freedom, while the Russian people are embittered by their current incapacity to do so. So they take comfort in the midfortunes and chaos of free societies. It postpones the uncomfortable self-reflection they have to deal with on their own. Schadenfreude.