But the existence of the Steele dossier proves that that's not the case.
Hillary Clinton hired ex-British spy Steele to talk to his Russian sources and pay them for dirt on Trump.
Given that the whole world knew that Steele was a former spy how likely is it that he could be nosing around with very high level contacts in Russia without Putin's intelligence agencies knowing about it?
But if Putin was in favor of Trump why would he allow Russian sources to provide material that could hurt Trump? The first thing to note is that while Steele's sources are anonymous and second, third, fourth hand the idea that none of them were connected to Russian intelligence and that none of them would mention the actions of a British ex-spy in order to get money from Russian intelligence, curry favor with Russian Intelligence, or avoid being prosecuted after the Steele dossier went public is essentially zero.
So it's very unlikely that Putin wasn't aware of what Steele was up to; it's especially unlikely if Putin was colluding with Trump because it would be the Russians top counter intelligence priority to hide any links between Trump and Putin. A Manchurian candidate is of no value if the US knew of their real loyalty.
Hence to believe that Putin didn't know that Hillary was collecting rumors about Trump requires us to believe that Putin, and his virtual police state, had no idea that a well known British ex-spy was conducing an operation which would put the most important Russian foreign policy action, suborning a US President, at risk.
But even if we posit that by some fluke Putin didn't know before he certainly found out when the Steele dossier was made public. If in fact Steele had pulled one over on Putin and put a huge investment by Russia at risk we have every reason to suspect that Steele's sources would disappear, be imprisoned, or accidentally die. Yet Steele has made no mention of his sources suffering any consequences.
Think about it. If Putin had turned Trump or even if he was only trying to get Trump to collude with him does anyone think he's the kinda guy who would just say "oh well" when Russians worked against him? That's certainly not been Putin's modus operandi to date.
The bottom line is that if Putin was colluding with Trump he would have either blocked Russian sources from talking to Steele or punished them after the fact when their roles were revealed.
But since neither of those events occurred it's clear that Putin wasn't collaborating with Trump.
Even worse for Hillary the fact that Putin probably knew about Steele's efforts and did nothing to thwart them indicates that Putin was ok with giving Hillary a hand.
If Putin wasn't a big fan of Hillary, or at least of the Democrats efforts to delegitimize the 2016 election, he would have produced evidence showing that the unverified claims in the Steele dossier were false. After all Trump would be much more able to help Russia if the media wasn't constantly claiming that he was in Putin's pocket.
Yet Putin has taken no such action.
If we look at what Trump has done since he took office we get even more evidence that he's not working with Putin:
- Trump got Germany to not make a huge contract with Russia for natural gas
- Trump increased US defense spending
- Trump overturned Obama's policy of no missile defense in Europe
- Trump got NATO to increase defense spending by $100 billion
- Trump is giving lethal military aid to Ukraine which Obama refused to do
- Trump attacked Putin's client in Syria which Obama refused to do
Trump's only "crime" has been saying we should try to have good relations with Russia which if said by anyone other than Trump would be hailed by Democrats as good diplomacy given that Russia has a massive nuclear stockpile.
Trump has also said nice things about Putin which makes sense; when you're trying to get someone to agree to a deal that's good for you you flatter them. Salesmen and diplomats do that all the time even when they hate the guy they're trying to convince to do things their way.
It's abundantly clear that the fact that Putin allowed Hillary to get unverified rumors about Trump from anonymous Russian sources and that Putin did nothing to discredit those reports shows that there is no way that Putin thinks that Trump is on his side.
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