“There’s an abundance of evidence that – from his behavior alone – that Donald Trump is compromised in some degree or capacity by the Russians,” said left-wing pundit Rick Wilson on Monday.
Joining a discussion panel on left-wing and Democrat-aligned MSNBC, Wilson made an attempt at humor: “There’s vastly more evidence that Donald Trump is a Russian stooge than there ever was that Barack Obama was a Kenyan Muslim terrorist sleeper agent.”
Wilson presented himself as hawkish towards Russia and Vladimir Putin. He also indirectly referenced a report based on unnamed sources of an allegedly contentious conversation between Trump and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull regarding refugee admissions. The allegations of the report – incidentally originating with The Washington Post, a left-wing news outlet aligned with Democrats – have since been challenged by Turnbull.
Wilson accused Trump of of viewing Putin as “representing American values:”
“This is a guy who’s going out of his way to destroy our alliances throughout the world, to compromise our alliances, to wreck the relationships we’ve had with Australia, with Britain, with European countries. And yet, every day that he’s called on to talk about Vladimir Putin, it’s in terms of respect, it’s in terms of wanting to get along, it’s in terms of how he can make Vladimir Putin’s life just a little easier every day.
It’s a moment, frankly, that folks who have paid attention to the Russian national behavior – not only from the Cold War era, but recently, where they kill journalists, they poison political opponents, they shoot down civilian airliners and invade their neighbors – this is not somebody that I think represents American values in any way whatsoever, but Donald Trump apparently does.”
For months, leftists and Democrats pushed unsubstantiated narratives connecting Trump and Russia. Initially blaming Russia and Putin for interfering with the 2016 presidential election and tipping the scales in Trump’s benefit (a narrative still advanced by left-wing Republican David Frum), it then transitioned into Trump being beholden to Russia as a result of Moscow’s possession of compromising intelligence and his financial investments in the world’s largest country.
Wilson’s profile at The Daily Beast – another left-wing and Democrat-aligned news media outlet – describes him as “a national Republican political strategist and media consultant based in Florida who has produced television for governors, U.S. Senate candidates, super PACS, and corporations.”
Wilson implicitly describes himself as a “real conservative” who understands and espouses “real conservatism.”
MSNBC is attempting to rebrand itself as an objective and nonpartisan news media outlet, having dropped its previous “Lean Forward” – a nod to the neo-Marxist “progressive” movement – slogan from its marketing and promotional materials.
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