Probably not yet. Maybe never. But the pressure is building for sure. This Blog has been scornful in the past as regular readers will know, of this whole Russia drama in the US, not least because I do not believe that Americans are easily deceived. There are a lot of reasons why Hilary lost and against a conventional Republican candidate with a united party behind him or her and a squeaky clean cupboard without skeletons, she most certainly would have. But against Trump? The world view, let alone that of the wisest commentators in the US, was that he could not possibly win. But he did. So there must be a reason.
There was. Just as in Brexit and Macron and the Far Right in Germany, there was in the US an anti-political surge which Trump the outsider rode with skill. He promised to repatriate jobs was enough to push him across the electoral college line through the rust belt path without any special help. But Clinton won the popular vote by quite a good margin. The Clinton campaign had paid some British ex-spy to construct a dossier purporting to prove that Trump had engaged in fetish sex in Moscow, while the Trump campaign continued, even after winning, to accuse ‘crooked Hilary’ of putting national security at risk by unauthorized use of a private server for government emails. So both sides were throwing mud.
We know all the rest. What is different now, and why this Blog is beginning to take developments more seriously, is the confirmation from Facebook and Twitter of the huge output of fake news and comment put through their sites during and in the lead up to the election, paid for by platforms in Russia connected to the Kremlin. This is not rumour but fact. Much of this commentary and fake news was favourable to the Trump campaign, but by no means all. So we know that Russia was active and we can imagine that this is the shape of things to come. It is more than likely that Western propaganda engines will be active in the upcoming Russian presidential election for example. Rather than a hysterical witch hunt, a healthy dose of cynicism at what we read on these social media sites might be the more mature streetwise response.
So here we are with an ongoing investigation, bolstered by real live indictments and people under house arrest or pleading guilty and actively helping investigators. They all have some kind of connection to Trump, but there is nothing to connect him to the misdemeanors for which they are charged. But this project now has legs. It could be a Watergate, which got rid of a president but it could also be an Iran Contra or Whitewater, neither of which did. What it turns out to be depends on the answer to this single question.
What exactly is Trump’s connection to Russia?
Watch this space.