Plotz was asking, ofc, about Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort sharing poll data with suspected GRU agent Konstantin Kilimnik. And Emily Bazelon answered “no” — there’s nothing to tie the president to his campaign manager sharing his campaign’s data with a Russian cut-out.
The translation of the latin principle at the heart of agency law, respondeat superior, is “let the master answer.” It reflects centuries of legal tradition that a person is responsible for the acts of a person he employs if those acts are taken in the course of the employment.Let me add a little in here: Trump knew very well that Manafort had a history of working for the Russians and with Russian mobsters and moneylaundering. Not only did he hire him, he got him on board for a salary of $0. Anything suspicious in any of that?
Of course, the mere fact that Paul Manafort was Trump’s chief lieutenant in the campaign, empowered by him to make all sorts of decisions including wrt the use of internal polling data, doesn’t end the inquiry about Trump’s responsibility for what Manafort did.
But the fact that one man employed the other, with express notice of Manafort’s past work and on terms that obviously called his motives and incentives into question, clear “draws in” Trump and creates “implications.”
The exchange between Plotz and Bazelon is emblematic of an broader obtuseness—from Manafort to Cohen to Flynn to Papadopoulos to Stone to Don Jr to Page. Their entanglements with Russians and Russian cut-outs are treated as isolated happenstances. Yet they all worked for Trump.
And they’ve all lied for Trump, concealing their secret entanglements as long as they could. Trump is the one, apropos tonight’s news, who ties the whole room together. Yet the great and the good of our media ecosystem still talk about him like he probably wasn’t involved.
So, maybe not the great and the good. But I assume many journalists are fearful of crossing Trump.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
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