“Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal journalist detained in Russia, will be released almost without delay after the election, though in fact before I take office. You will be at HOME, SAFE AND WITH YOUR FAMILY. Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, will do this for me, but not for others, and WE PAY NOTHING!
This generated a lot of hypotheses about what Trump meant. For the moment, he has not given details and the issue was not touched on at the former president’s rally in New York.
But here are 3 odds.
Perhaps the Republican was just speculating about long-term events, guessing in a chest-raising way. If this interpretation is correct, Trump doesn’t know that Gershkovich will be released between early November and mid-January, but the former president expects it. because of his assumptions about Putin and the Russian leader’s preference for making him happy.
In both the Time magazine interview and his online message, Trump speaks with wonderful confidence about precisely what Putin would do in the coming months. Note the declarative phrases about long-term events: “Putin will lose it” and the Russian autocrat “will do it for me. “This raises the troubling possibility that the presumptive Republican nominee is seeing Putin’s plans firsthand, and that Trump is simply conveying his benefactor’s intentions.
Trump may not have guessed, and he may have no idea of Moscow’s plans, but it is conceivable that the Republican would want to let Putin know his personal tastes.
As Jon Chait of New York magazine puts it, “Maybe he’s right that Putin ‘will do this for me, but not for anyone else. ‘”But that’s because Putin rightly sees Trump as a best friend whose good fortune he’s invested in. What’s worse is that by blatantly signaling to Putin that he doesn’t need Gershkovich’s release before the election, he’s destroying any chance of securing his release before then. If Gershkovich were released before the election, Trump would look stupid, and Trump “understands perfectly well that Putin doesn’t need that to happen. “
It’s a question the former president probably wouldn’t answer: If Trump has exclusive influence over Putin and the Russian leader is willing to release Gershkovich as a favor to the Republican, why doesn’t Trump use that force now and help the reporter respond?Come back immediately?
The presumptive Republican nominee can simply take credit for it, spend the next few months bragging about his accomplishment and reveling in pre-election accolades. So why not pick up the phone and use your influence now?
Steve Benen is a producer on “The Rachel Maddow Show,” editor-in-chief of MaddowBlog, and a political contributor to MSNBC. He is also the best-selling author of “The Impostors: How Republicans Quit Governing and Seized American Politics. “
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