Over the past three years, the MSM has done a thorough job brainwashing its captive audience into believing that Putin preferred, supported, or even colluded with Trump in the 2016 elections. Not only was this untrue, but even the idea of such a preference, much less collusion, was ridiculous in the U.S. in the spring of 2016. Russia was our ally in the fight against terror, and CIA Director John Brennan visited FSB head Gennadiy Bortnikov in Moscow in March 2016.

Not Trump, but the Democratic party and Hillary Clinton personally were the perfect fit for Putin. Hillary Clinton started her tenure as Secretary of State by implementing a “reset” with Russia in 2009. During 2012, Russia joined the World Trade Organization, and the West bought from it hot air (carbon credits). Later that year, Obama was caught on mic promising Medvedev that he would become even more accommodating towards Russia after the election. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama sold Uranium One to Russia, organized the transfer of dual-use technology in Skolkovo, and allied themselves with Russian-funded groups against fracking and pipelines in the U.S.  Allegations that Putin had a personal grudge against Hillary, and kept it for five years, are just laughable.

Trump conducted a Miss Universe pageant in Russia in 2013, and that was all. As a presidential candidate, he promised a U.S. military buildup, and he said the U.S. should shoot down Russian interceptors that were reportedly harassing U.S. military planes in international airspace, after appropriate diplomatic steps.

The ideation of a Putin-Trump association and of Russian interference on Trump’s behalf came from Western Europe. People of Germany, Britain, and other EU states were dissatisfied with policies robbing them of their sovereignty.  European politicians wanted to crush dissent, and Russia and Putin became a convenient boogeyman. The government of Angela Merkel blamed Russia for public protests. This is how Obama advisor Ben Rhodes illustrated this attitude in his book The World as It Is:

In Germany, Merkel’s spokesperson told me about how fake news impacted their politics... A rape, for instance, caused a huge outcry in a community. For days, there were protests, political fallout. ... “And we trace the story, and it started with a social media user with a German-sounding name, but something is not exactly right. The name is a little off. And the server, it is not German… Russians...”

Later, James Clapper expressed a similar sentiment, saying that the Russians are “almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever.” Peter Strzok and Lisa Page exchanged comparable texts immediately before officially launching Crossfire Hurricane.

Rhodes’ quote continues:

I thought about all the made-up stories about Hillary -- her ill health, her corruption, her crimes.

Sorry for making you laugh amid such a serious matter.

Apparently, the hysteria about alleged Russian internet operations was based on a small study of coordinated political trolling in Latvia. The study didn’t include Germany, Britain, or any other large European country, and its conclusions are inapplicable to them. But the study is clear on one point:

…the influence of pro-Russian trolling on leading US media outlets demonstrated the opposite outcome to that expected.

While Germans protested Merkel’s immigration policies, the British demanded freedom from the European Union, and were preparing to vote on Brexit. The old guard, which has almost stolen the country from its citizens, also blamed Russia and Putin.

In April 2016, Obama went to Britain to stomp against Brexit, an interference in British domestic affairs, obviously inviting reciprocation -- interference from the British government in the U.S. elections on behalf of the Democratic party. Here, the connection between Trump and the U.S. elections was even stronger. Rhodes laments:

 …the Brexit campaign was tapping into the same sense of nationalism and nostalgia that the Trump campaign was promoting back home: the days of Churchill, the absence of immigrants and intrusive international institutions.

The Obama administration’s desire to subject this country to intrusive international institutions is an important admission. Trump is a defender of U.S. sovereignty, and such institutions are its enemies.

The Eurocrats confused the invented threat of “Russian influence campaigns” with the real prospect that Trump would not be their ally against their own people -- unlike Obama or Hillary. In their imagination, the Trump-Putin nexus was natural. Ben Rhodes unintentionally confirms this point by quoting the chief of staff to then Prime Minister David Cameron:

“You’re not worried that he [Trump] can win? Putin would like nothing more.  Some of our people,” he said, referring to conservatives who support Brexit, “say that he’s tapped into something with this immigration issue.”

The Obama administration’s propensity to accommodate EU and UN agendas primed it to believe lies about Trump. It looks as if the Obama administration imported both the obsession with “Russian influence campaigns” and the wacky idea of a Trump-Putin connection. European governments created projects to combat “Russian influence campaigns” at home and abroad, joined by the Obama administration in April 2016.

On May 13, exactly one week after CrowdStrike privately attributed the DNC hacking to an imaginary GRU hacking group APT28 (“Fancy Bear”), German secret police (BfV) publicly blamed the same imaginary group for the Bundestag hacking that happened a year earlier. The DNC emails, published by WikiLeaks on July 22, were probably leaked by a disgruntled Bernie supporter, unrelated to hacking.

In mid-April 2016, Bruce & Nellie Ohr were in contact with the German Embassy, discussing with its first secretary what the Germans called “Impact of Russian influence operations in Europe (‘PsyOps/InfoWar’)” and the embassy’s offer to provide “Russia analysts.” They also invited the secretary to their house. What came out of it is unknown because they deleted the emails immediately.

By the end of May, the conspiracy theory of Trump-Putin collusion has been already developed. Obama’s AG Loretta Lynch has testified:

…the constellation of things that have come to be known as the Russia investigation, things were brought to my attention in 2016, I believe it was the spring… the late spring …by the Director [Comey] and Deputy Director [McCabe]… And over the course of the summer most of briefings on that issue were shifted to the National Security Council level.

The National Security Council Principals are “some of the highest-ranking officials in the government, including the secretaries of State, Treasury, Defense, and Homeland Security, the attorney general, the head of the CIA, the White House chief of staff, UN ambassador, and more.” All of them were Obama appointees. All of them had been told to toe the party line -- that Trump was not an ordinary candidate, but a suspected Putin agent. The only problem with this theory was total lack of evidence.

We live in the 21^st century. Contacts and connections between people in different countries are routine.  Words and contacts between the Trump associates and Russia, whether real or invented, could not, even when misinterpreted in the worst possible way, rise to the level of “collusion.” Despite that, by the end of May 2016 the case against Trump was already formed and even escalated to the level of the National Security Council. It had no supporting evidence, but plenty of contradictory facts. And then the DNC contractor Fusion GPS hired Steele. Together, they manufactured the “evidence” -- the infamous Steele dossier. CrowdStrike was already hired. (Note the timing: the first CrowdStrike report went out on June 14, and the first Steele report was dated by June 20.) Both DNC contractors would be churning out their reports through December 2016. The rest is history.

My short book Missing from the Mueller Report is available on Amazon.