I am a great believer in tying seemingly unrelated comments, situations and behaviours together because they usually add up to something.
During the early stages of the primaries, what perplexed me was how well organized, coordinated and attended the Trump rallies were, particularly considering the lack of infrastructure and claims by Trump he was not in the pockets of special interest groups.
On February 23rd of this year in a in a posting called ‘The NRA is Controlling America - We the People Don’t Count For Them’ I asserted that the N.R.A. was the most powerful and influential lobbying group in Washington who have most of the lawmakers in their pocket, and suggested, as a conspiracy theorist, that their aim was to have a sufficient number of people armed and ready for when attempts were made to impeach Trump.
What I did not connect however was a Russian connection.
In an New York Times opinion piece by Michelle Goldberg called ‘Are Republicans Covering for Trump or for Themselves? suggesting that “If the N.R.A. was compromised by Russia, the whole party’s in trouble.” makes the connection. “Of all of the interlocking mysteries of the Trump-Russia scandal, one that I’ve found particularly perplexing is the utter servility of congressional Republicans before a president many of them hate and believe to be compromised by a foreign power.” In this piece Goldberg effectively makes the argument that there is a Russian connection to the N.R.A . Add to this the arrest of Maria Butina, who is accused of being a Russian agent who infiltrated the N.R.A.
It is now pretty clear that Russia wants to undermine democracy. What we now need some real clarity on is to what extent the N.R.A. is compromised by Russia, and to what extent the Republicans are compromised by the N.R.A.
I have every confidence that if allowed, Mueller will connect the dots; and his report can’t come too soon. The more time that goes by, the better equipped those who will mount a counter offensive will be to stage a civil war.