Josh Marshall details various ways that Trump's current business is dependent on funding from Russian oligarchs and operatives dependent on Putin, then notes Putin's hand in the GOP platform:
The Trump Camp was totally indifferent to the platform. So party activists were able to write one of the most conservative platforms in history. Not with Trump's backing but because he simply didn't care. With one big exception: Trump's team mobilized the nominee's traditional mix of cajoling and strong-arming on one point: changing the party platform on assistance to Ukraine against Russian military operations in eastern Ukraine. For what it's worth (and it's not worth much) I am quite skeptical of most Republicans call for aggressively arming Ukraine to resist Russian aggression. But the single-mindedness of this focus on this one issue - in the context of total indifference to everything else in the platform - speaks volumes.This sparked a recent memory. Tony Schwartz, Trump's "co-author" of The Art of the Deal (actually its sole author, as the publisher verifies), recounts the sum of Trump's input:
