re: Paul Manafort

quote:

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It's really incredible how deep he was involved in Ukraine and Russia. My feeling is Manafort was communicating back to Russia. I'm not even saying Trump is wrong in this situation because I don't think he really knew who this guy was? Trump knew him for years but Trump wouldn't have any knowledge of his Kremlin ties or that he never cut them.

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To be fair to Manafort- if Ukraine doesn't blow up in such a way that they can't destroy the evidence on the way out and if Trump doesn't win, its possible he would have skated. Remember this is a guy who in the 80s was accused of bribing a French President with illegal contributions from a Middle Eastern Arms dealer to push through France's sale of submarines to Pakistan.

That's like part of a Bond plot. The dude is shady as frick but has always managed to be just indispensable enough to avoid going down.

OTOH- Trump took a ton of shite from basically every foreign policy expert who was asked (on both the left and the right) when he hired the guy. I get that he probably assumed it was just more bitching from the establishment but even a cursory background check should have shown Trump it might be a bad idea to toss him the reins.