Discord and Violence

NBC broke the story on Monday (link here) that Russians involved in the 2016 interference with American elections continued to operate into at least 2018, the midterm year. Per the piece, the Russians had "ambitious plans to stoke unrest and even violence inside the U.S." by inflaming racial discord.

Of course, Donald Trump will do absolutely nothing about this. Nor will he say anything about it. He'll accuse America's intelligence agencies of making up "fake news." And when Russia denies everything, he'll slavishly believe them.

Either he's doing this because he's some kind of Manchurian candidate, which seems far fetched, or he's doing this because he has hundreds of millions if not billions in loans from Russian sources and doesn't want to piss them when it comes time to refinance to keep them from turning him down. The latter is the far more likely reason.

Trump typically finances his property with shorter-term interest-only loans that end in an all-principal balloon payment, meaning he needs to refinance every five years. Failing to secure financing would mean default and a forced bankruptcy, which in his case would be his seventh.