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If Putin didn't successfully engineer Trump's victory then it is not from his lack of trying or from wanting that to be the outcome.

The point is that he tried to engineer Trump's victory.

And the overarching question is why.

Why would a corrupt dictator in control of the world's second largest nuclear arsenal and a badly faltering economy want Donald Trump to achieve the Presidency over Hilary Clinton?

His rational is what the historians will be most compelled by.

Trump admires most the brutal tyrants of the world - Putin, Duterte, Kim, Sisi, Saddam.

Trump is a weak, egocentric, anti-intellectual, grifter who is standing helpless on the bridge of the ship as it slowly founders, unable to make the course corrections needed to keep it moving forward.

You may not like it, your op-ed piece in the Globe not withstanding, but that is the very unfortunate reality that the western democracies find themselves in.

Kudos to Mr. Saunders for shining the harsh light of reality on it.

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