Not once has Trump even spoken negatively of Vladimir Putin. Even in those instances where Congress or the State Department has authorized sanctions against Russia, Trump has remained silent. Even when Trump struck at the Syrian airbase involved in gas attacks, he made it a point to notify the Russians so they could pull their personnel out.

I have no idea why Trump has given Putin a carte blanche, but my guess is the hypothesis that best fits the facts is that Putin is blackmailing our President. And the most likely reason for the blackmail is some business deal Trump was involved in in Russia, either with Putin or some of his fellow oligarchs, or both. My guess is money laundering, like selling Trump properties to Russians at highly inflated prices, or taking Russian loans to bail himself out of disastrous business deals, like his New Jersey Casino fiasco. C’mon, people. Has anybody in history ever lost money on a casino?

These business deals may not even be technically illegal, but they would be embarrassing for Mr Trump if they were publicized, so he goes easy on the Russians in return for their silence. And it all gets handled by Deutsche Bank, the world’s most corrupt financial institution.

Susan Rice wrote an op-ed in the NYT today about why Trump has been reticent to even mention the story about Russian bounties against US servicemen in Afghanistan.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/30/opinion/trump-russia-afghanistan.html

She brings up a lot of other crimes the Russians have pulled off he has been curiously forgiving about. She brings up the question, but offers no answers. Well, I think I know.

Its just what happens when you elect a businessman to high political office.