[View here as a Twitter thread]
Ideas from Yale Prof. Snyder’s book & 5-12 lecture available here: youtube.com/watch?v=ZJe4Nl… Spoiler: Collusion doesn’t describe how “the Russians elevated Trump to the office of the presidency.” (Snyder’s words)
1/ Trump’s repeated use of the word “collusion” is a deliberate ploy to draw us away from what actually happened and create a fiction. In fact, Trump was a tool and a tactic. The Russians had a strategy and a plan. The strategy was to turn the U.S. into a country like Russia.
2/ People ask: Could Trump have succeeded without Russian help? Snyder’s answer: Without Russian money propping up Trump and helping him pretend he was a successful businessman, there would never have been Trump the Public Figure to run for president in the first place.
3/ Trump was a failed businessman, but he was good at pretending to be a successful businessman. Trump is good at lying, and creating crisis and spectacle—exactly the qualities for the perfect leader of a Russian United States. What does Snyder mean?
4/ When Trump announced his candidacy, people marveled that he didn’t have a traditional campaign. He didn’t need one! He had Russia behind him, hacking & leaking emails, figuring out internet strategies for frightening and motivating Americans via social media, etc.
5/ Example: For a very brief time after the Access Hollywood Tape was released, people thought Trump’s campaign was over. Within a half hour after the tape was released, Russians, their bots, and helpers, went energetically to work.
6/They spread fictions like “Hillary is a pimp who sells sex with children” & “Podesta participates in weird rituals . . .” etc. These fictions surrounded and eclipsed the Access Hollywood Tape. From an American point of view, it was chaos & confusion. Nobody could focus.
7/ From the Russian point of view, the chaos worked. Trump’s candidacy survived. As Russia saw the situation: They had Trump’s back and were taking care of him. Public opinion polls favored Clinton. Russia favored Trump. Russia won.
8/ Trump is always saying “no collusion.” It’s a deliberate strategy that accomplishes two goals. First, it keeps people from talking about actual crimes that happened like conspiracy, tax evasion, etc. If you’re still saying “What crimes?” see
9/ Or see twitter.com/Teri_Kanefield… to name two. The second goal was to create a fiction to mask what actually happened. Collusion implies two equal partners working together. What happened was: The campaign that elected Trump wasn’t his. Trump just went along for the ride.
