[mynameishere]

Why would the Russian state want to help Trump? How did that ever make sense? "Bwahaha, let's connive to get a patriot into the White House rather than a bought-sold-and-enslaved traitor!" Unless they thought someone with an "America first" attitude would be less likely to start WWIII, it's a ridiculous conspiracy theory.

Those boring leaks probably came from the inside.

[zopa]

Trump is, at minimum, lukewarm on NATO. If you think that’s good policy that’s your business, but surely it’s not hard to see what the appeal to Russia could be.

[93po]

> Why would the Russian state want to help Trump?

Especially because Trump was objectively pretty anti-Russia, and did a lot of things that pissed off Russia. But there is too much hysteria around "OMG RUSSIA AND TRUMP" and general FUD propaganda for anyone to see the forest for the trees of "orange man bad"

[CamperBob2]

"We get all the funding we need out of Russia," isn't objectively anti-Russia.

Believing Putin over his own intel agencies -- and publicly proclaiming as much -- is actively pro-Russia.

If Trump didn't want people to think he was a Russian asset, he might have tried not acting like one.

[dragonwriter]

> Why would the Russian state want to help Trump?

Their main objectives for the 2016 election was to prevent Clinton from being elected and to maximize internal division in the US; Trump was the main recipient of their support, but they also used their influence operations to support candidates to Clinton’s left (with varying responses from the candidates themselves) including Sanders (who publicly addressed it after being briefed on it, telling Russia to get out of US elections).

> How did that ever make sense?

Weakening NATO and Western unity alone was a pretty good benefit; its hardly the only place in the West where Russia, around the same time, backed nationalist political movements to disrupt internal or international unity in the West.