By Accident or By Design

Just Security is an excellent, non-sensational online forum run by the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University School of Law. They publish very readable, often shorter articles about the intersection of human rights and national security.

A few days ago they ran a short piece by a law professor about how both Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin had pretty much identical goals in the 2016 American presidential election (link here). Hence my title to this blog entry "by accident or design" -- whether or not Trump and Putin colluded in their efforts, the result turned out like they had done so.

Both the media and federal law enforcement are now taking a closer look at the many contacts between the Russian government and the Trump campaign during the recent election season. Contact in and of itself is not illegal, but colluding to break the law is; whether or not that occurred remains to be seen.

As I've written before on this blog, Putin is a dangerous individual who persecutes LGBT people. Anyone who aligns himself with Putin is inherently suspect of being dangerous, too, as a result.

With Putin and Trump so deeply intertwined, it will always throw a significant shadow of doubt over the latter's claims of being pro-LGBT.