CLEVELAND ― While the nation has obsessed over Melania Trump’s plagiarism and other oddities during the Republican National Convention, events much wilder ― and more telling about the substance of a potential Trump presidency ― have been going down largely unnoticed.

Team Trump has proved that they now have such a tight grip on the Republican Party that they can force the entire institution to adopt their view of one of America’s chief foreign policy concerns: how to handle Russia’s paranoid, populist autocrat and his efforts to assert himself abroad.

On Monday, the same day the Washington Post revealed that the Trump campaign had gutted an anti-Russian provision in the GOP platform, the stage was turned over in prime time to a retired general who has quite literally been on the payroll of Moscow. Added to a dizzying array of past Trump-world connections to Russian President Vladimir Putin, the events solidified the notion that Putin and the current incarnation of the GOP have never been closer.

A New York Times interview with Trump published Wednesday offered further proof. It showcased that the Republican nominee holds views on the world that sound straight out of the Russian leader’s mouth and is reluctant to honor U.S. commitments to nations Putin regularly threatens.

In the face of near-universal wariness of Putin among foreign policy experts on both sides of the aisle, Donald Trump continued in the interview to speak of the former KGB agent as an effective leader with whom he would get along.

It's not hard to explain the worldview he seems to espouse, based on the interview and previous statements.

Who’s to blame for the tensions between Putin and the West? Weak Europeans, for failing to deal with their continent’s problems, and President Barack Obama, for failing to make Putin respect him. Add in, of course, anyone who has a problem with Putin’s persistent support for the dictator of Syria, a man Trump sees as an “A”-grade leader despite his responsibility for the rise of the Islamic State group and the ongoing refugee crisis, and others who dispute Putin’s cleverly twisted depiction of American foreign policy.