The MSNBC set appeared to show some doubt Monday night about the narrative that President Trump’s election victory was the fulfillment of a carefully laid Kremlin plan.
Joining Host Rachael Maddow to discuss the Russian government’s perspective on the Trump Administration, New Yorker Editor David Remnick expressed a very different take than many of his peers in the media.
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Remnick started by expressing his uncertainty as to Russia’s actual influence on the November election’s outcome.
“I don’t think necessarily they did turn this election around. It’s hard to quantify what effect they may have had,” he stated. “How do you stack it up next to the FBI letter? How do you stack it up next to a very poor campaign, in certain respects, by Hillary Clinton herself, to say nothing of the appeal, like it or not, of Donald Trump?”
The Russians themselves, according to Remnick, never even thought it was possible for Trump to win. “Everybody expected her to win. You expected her to win. The polls expected her to win,” he told Maddow.
“So they succeeded, in some sense, beyond their wildest dreams, and now they’re freaked,” Remnick added ominously. “If you talk to people in Moscow now, there’s a lot of buyer’s remorse. There was an order sent down to Russian television, ‘enough with the celebrating about Trump!’”