The Trump Administration can’t shake this Russia thing…I guess because they keep lying about it and at some point lies do actually matter.
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/carter-page-russia-trip-trump-corey-lewandowski-235784
The first event seems exceedingly benign, and reads as a form of ‘gotcha’ politics.
The second event, that of Carter Page’s trip to Russia, is less benign, though it may appear so on the surface. Page did indeed give a commencement speech at the New Economic School in Russia, but this article raises some troubling questions. From the article:
'Page said he’s visiting Russia in a private capacity, and has no meetings planned with the Russian government. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said Page won’t see any Kremlin officials. He isn’t representing the Trump campaign on his trip to Russia, campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks said by e-mail.
Even so, Page may make informal contact with the Russian establishment, according to Sergei Markov, a political consultant to Putin’s staff. The Kremlin is looking for ways to reach out to the Trump camp, he said.
“Trump is promising an end to constant pressure against Russia and we’re interested in finding out if this is just a populist promise or something more serious,” Markov said by phone.’
So to summarize: the Russian government admitted that it would probably contact Page during his trip in order to reach out to Trump, even after Page claimed that he was going as a private citizen. Moving on:
‘Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, the former U.S. secretary of state, is viewed warily in Russia. Konstantin Kosachyov, head of the foreign-affairs committee in Russia’s upper house of parliament, said she probably will provoke worsening tensions with Russia if she becomes president. At the same time, while Trump offers the tantalizing prospect of better relations, he’s also scarily unpredictable, Kosyachov said in an interview.’
This suggests that the Kremlin was looking for some way to control Trump’s ‘unpredictable’ nature at the time. Back to Page’s commencement speech:
‘During his speech, in which he appeared to defend the authoritarian model in former Soviet Central Asian republics, Page cited a 2012 decree by Putin and a speech by a Chinese leader. China and Russia, he said, have policies based on the principles of mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit. That has worked to the advantage of all parties in their relationships, he said.’
Hmm. So this was Trump’s foreign relations expert during the campaign, a man who doesn’t care for American values of democracy and anti-corruption rhetoric, and who values policies of ‘mutual benefit’ between (preferably authoritarian) states. Anyone who knows anything about Chinese government knows that it is dependent on personal favors to grease the wheels of power.
This article was written in July of last year, and I hadn’t heard of it until now. This is what is so frustrating about the mainstream media narrative and the Democratic establishment: they focus on gotcha politics and bare speculation while failing to provide an in-depth and nuanced reporting of the philosophies underlying political figures, philosophies which are based on the words and actions of these people and as such cannot be spun into spurious claims. In the case of Carter Page, his philosophy is much more troubling than the Russia Dossier because it is plain to see.