When I was in my teens there was an Academy Award winning movie called the” Manchurian Candidate.” It starred Frank Sinatra and Laurence Harvey. Its plot involved a communist country trying to manipulate a presidential election by having a prisoner of war it had brainwashed assassinate the nominee of one of the parties, catapulting its preferred candidate into the White House.
This year, we have seen computer hackers employed by the Russian Government hack into the computers of the Democratic Party and turn over a trove of e-mails to Wikileaks in an effort to damage the Clinton campaign on the eve of the Party’s convention.
Since the Convention and the disclosure, state election officials been warned by the Federal Government that their electronic voting is at risk and that the results could be manipulated by the hackers.
One doesn’t have to be clairvoyant to see which candidate would benefit from this type of activity.
Vladimir Putin reportedly loathes Hillary Clinton while Donald Trump has a very public “man crush” on him, even hailing him as a stronger leader than the U.S. President.
Trump’s preference for Russia and Putin has been evident for some time. The alarming warning signs about where he would lead us as President have been scattered upon the political landscape throughout the campaign.
Trump has proclaimed that he would condition our commitment to our NATO allies on whether they had fulfilled their financial commitments to the alliance. Never mind that the only time the alliance has been tested was when they all came to our assistance after the attack on our country on September 11, 2001.
Trump has endorsed Russia’s forcible annexation of Crimea comparing it to the invasion of Iraq.
Trump has surrounded himself with campaign aides who have involved themselves in elections in the Ukraine on behalf of Putin’s proxy candidates. Indeed, his campaign chair, Paul Manafort, was forced to leave the campaign after it was disclosed that he may have been paid millions of dollars by one of his Russian proxy candidates.
Make no mistake about the real reason Trump is not disclosing his tax returns as every other candidate for President has done since 1968.
It isn’t about the audit he claims is ongoing.
The IRS does not prohibit a taxpayer who is being audited from disclosing their returns.
Moreover, since the IRS has possession of the returns that it is auditing it is disingenuous to claim that disclosure would prejudice the audit.
Furthermore, Trump has refused to disclose the tax returns for years in which the audits have been completed.
No, the real reason that he will not disclose his returns is because it would reveal the extent of his dealings and holdings in Russia.
While the Federal government, the Clinton campaign, the Democratic Party and legions of editorial writers and columnists have been condemning the hacking, who has been strangely silent about the subject?
Donald Trump.
His only comment to date was a wish that the Russian hackers would hack Hillary Clinton’s computer in search of more e-mails.
This seems somewhat strange since the man has repeatedly claimed that the outcome of the election is “rigged”
What would be even stranger is, if he is right and the Russian hackers change the outcome of our election and succeed in putting a pro-Russian, pro-Putin stooge in the White House.
I just lost dinner. I’ve read so much about Trump and his self promoted success through dirty dealings and yet our votes could be hacked favoring him. God help us.