Opinion: Donald Trump, the Siberian candidate?

Good morning. I’m Paul Thornton, The Times’ letters editor, and it is Saturday, July 30, 2016. We survived a week in which for a few days, Jerry Brown wasn’t California’s governor.

Here’s a look back at the week in Opinion.

A major political party just spent an entire week nominating and celebrating the first female candidate with a serious chance of winning the White House. And (perhaps unsurprisingly), the biggest headlines were about yet another Donald Trump faux pas.

On Tuesday, the Republican nominee for president (writing those words about Trump still doesn’t come naturally) asked Russian hackers to disclose thousands of emails deleted from the private server used by Hillary Clinton when she was secretary of State. Before Trump uttered that taunt — sarcastically, he claims now — Max Boot, a regular contributor to The Times’ op-ed page, called Russia’s intelligence apparatus “Trump’s opposition research firm”:

As a lifelong Republican, I don’t much care who runs the Democratic National Committee. But I am deeply disturbed by the way that Debbie Wasserman Schultz was forced to resign as the DNC head over the weekend. WikiLeaks released 20,000 stolen emails revealing a clear, if unsurprising, preference for Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders among Democratic officials. This appears to be a foreign intervention in American politics — and it may only be the beginning. ...

The Russians have every reason to sabotage the Democratic candidate. Her opponent, Donald Trump, is more pro-Russia than any previous presidential candidate. As far back as 2007, Trump was telling CNN that Russian President Vladimir Putin was doing a “great job.” In 2013, Trump tweeted: “Do you think Putin will be going to The Miss Universe Pageant in November in Moscow - if so, will he become my new best friend?” In 2015, Trump told MSNBC that Putin was a real leader, “unlike what we have in this country,” and that reports of Putin killing political opponents didn’t bother him — “Well, I think our country does plenty of killing also,” he said.

Trump repeatedly says he would “get along very well with” Putin. In return Putin has praised Trump as “bright and talented.” Trump positively glows as he repeats reports that “Putin likes me.”

The Trump-Russia links beneath the surface are even more extensive, as Franklin Foer has shown in Slate. Trump has sought and received funding from Russian investors for his business ventures, especially after most American banks stopped lending to him following his multiple bankruptcies. Trump’s de facto campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was a longtime consultant to Viktor Yanukovich, the Russian-backed president of Ukraine who was overthrown in 2014. Manafort also has done multimillion-dollar business deals with Russian oligarchs.

Trump’s foreign policy advisor Carter Page has his own business ties to the state-controlled Russian oil giant Gazprom. He recently delivered a speech in Moscow slamming the United States for its “hypocritical focus on ideas such as democratization” and praising Russia for a foreign policy supposedly built on “noninterference,” “tolerance” and “respect.” (Try telling that to Ukraine.) Another Trump foreign policy advisor, retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, flew to Moscow last year to attend a gala banquet celebrating Russia Today, the Kremlin’s propaganda channel, and was seated at the head table near Putin. Flynn is a regular guest on Russia Today; he refuses to say whether he gets paid.

Given the pro-Putin orientation of Trump and his circle, it is no surprise that his campaign quietly rolled back a call in the GOP platform for arming Ukraine to fight back against Russian aggression, as most Republican foreign-policy experts have advocated. Trump has more than once criticized NATO, the chief obstacle to Russian designs, as obsolete and has said he wouldn’t necessarily come to the aid of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s members if they are attacked by Russia. Trump also cheered Britain’s vote to exit the European Union, another institution that Putin sees as an impediment to his influence.

Trump’s campaign — whose slogan might as well be “Make Russia Great Again” — presents Putin with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reorient American foreign policy in Russia’s favor.

» Click here to read more.

“You can’t make this stuff up”: That’s how The Times’ editorial board sums up Trump’s overtures to Russian hackers. Imagine if, the editorial says, Hillary Clinton had invited a foreign power to hack the IRS and find Trump’s tax returns, which the nominee himself refuses to release — but of course Clinton would never do that. “Trump simply refuses to acknowledge that the words of a president — or someone who may soon become one — carry enormous weight and cannot be easily taken back.” L.A. Times

Still, Trump is not a Russian version of the Manchurian Candidate. The editorial board asks Democrats not to needlessly blow this up: “Even if the Russian government played a role in this intrusion and even if the purpose was to help Trump’s candidacy, that doesn’t mean Trump is taking orders from Moscow. Tempting as it might be for Democrats to insinuate that Trump is a Russian version of the Manchurian Candidate, they need to avoid guilt by association.” L.A. Times

Without Trump, this would be the undisputed biggest story of the 2016 election: The Democratic Party nominated a woman for president, and even though Hillary Clinton isn’t president yet, her presence atop a major party’s ticket is cause for celebration. “Finally, it seems, the promise that has been made to generations of girls — that they too could grow up to be president — may become more than a meaningless platitude,” says The Times’ editorial board. “This has been a long, long time in coming.” L.A. Times

Hillary Clinton reintroduced herself to Americans and sharply rebuked Trumpism. With her party’s formal endorsement wrapped up, Clinton moved on to the general election in her nomination acceptance speech by trying to win over voters convinced she is untrustworthy and mocking Donald Trump’s proclamation that he alone can save America. L.A. Times

Also from the Democratic National Convention: The party unites in (over)promising to reverse Citizens United, writes Michael McGough. Doyle McManus warns that Hillary Clinton is in trouble if she doesn’t get a big bounce in the polls after the Democrats pulled off a snazzy, orderly convention. The convention’s sharply pro-choice platform alienates millions of antiabortion Democrats, write Kristen Day and Charles Camosy. A separate piece addresses the Catholic civil war on abortion reignited by Tim Kaine’s vice presidential candidacy. Find more convention coverage at latimes.com/opinion.

California was Brexiting before the British, and November will be a doozy — that is, if you don’t incorrectly define “Brexit” as only a vote to depart a political union. Joe Mathews writes that Brexit is better understood as a plebiscite meant to advance the cause of special political interests, and plenty of those will be in the general-election ballot, including two pushed by Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom (one on gun control, the other on marijuana legalization). “When powerful elected officials use the ballot for their own devices, they can raise serious questions about the credibility of our democracy,” Mathews warns. Zócalo Public Square

There’s a new breed of “McMansions” in L.A. that will make you wish for the tract homes of the past. Ryan Bradley riffs on the hulking homes going up in his neighborhood: “Not quite half a block north, I come to the first of several two-story fortresses of solitude, all blocky and bland, with minimal plantings, maximal space, rising high above the surrounding cottages. We call them McMansions, but to me that designation brings to mind something far friendlier, if equally cookie cutter. These structures (I have trouble conceiving of them as homes) are drab, impersonal follies, as ugly as they are obtrusive.” L.A. Times

Reach me: paul.thornton@latimes.com