Nitpick: the word is expatriate. It shares a root with “patriot” but there’s no relationship meaning-wise. You can be a patriot expatriate, not a problem.
Yeah, all the Russia-related scandals make it sound like all Russians are money-laundering hacker assassins (in much the same way the “Islamic State” makes Muslims seem like antidemocratic misogynists) … if you don’t actually know any, you can’t easily dispel the stereotypes. I’m sure the Russian community has a “please don’t let it be a Russian” reaction to the news sometimes, so it’s good to hear a positive story about Russian good guys now and then.
On a related note, this has been bumping around in my mind for a while now, and I just don’t like it. Trump is our first atheist President. Yeah, I know, he passes for Presbyterian–a lot of us have to pass for something for various reasons, and most of us are way more convincing than he is. But leaving that aside for a moment, what “bad reputation” do atheists have in the larger culture? Let’s see: amoral, untrustworthy sociopaths who think they’re inherently superior to everyone else. Uh-oh. Oh yeah, and at least during the Cold War they were also Russian agents. Igh.
So I’m really, really hoping, in spite of his ongoing collapse in popular support, that when Trump eventually slouches off stage left, that whatever mysterious hypnotic “I’m one of you” hold he has on white Christians remains firmly in place. Because otherwise they’ll say: “That’s what happens when you put an atheist in charge,” and we’re back to the days of debating if atheists can actually be Americans. That’s all assuming that the evangelical support isn’t due to some speed-the-apocalypse-by-supporting-the-antichrist theory, but I’ve been assured by people who actually travel in evangelical circles that this is not the case. And I checked with multiple people, because I didn’t believe their assurances the first few times 😉
Re: the rest. Wikileaks and Sputnik (unintentionally) released the only publicly-available evidence tying Russia to the election that I know of. By the time the array of experts finally voiced their opinion–very late in the game–everyone already knew. If CrowdStrike never came forward with whatever secret evidence they thought they had to add to the pile, nothing would have changed. Same with the 17 intelligence agencies for that matter, although I was pleased to see they weren’t napping.