Alexander Nemenov/AFP/Getty Images Washington And The World Trump Didn’t Collude With Russia. So Why Does He Love Putin So Much? The Mueller report has settled a great mystery of the Trump era. But only one.

Blake Hounshell is the editor in chief of POLITICO Magazine.

No collusion.

That’s the clear interpretation of special counsel Robert Mueller’s findings, at least as they were conveyed Sunday by Attorney General William Barr. And it’s the line President Donald Trump’s gloating defenders are promoting.


But without access to Mueller’s full report, we can’t know just how damning—or not—this investigation is for Trump. Justice Department rules say a sitting president can’t be indicted, while other Justice Department rules say it’s wrong to release derogatory information about someone who isn’t charged with a crime.

So unless Barr decides the president is a special case, we might never learn the full extent of Trump’s actions. And we might never learn how close Mueller’s team came to charging Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner, let alone others caught up in the Russia scandal. Still, even if Barr does release the bulk of the report, the task was to pursue prosecutions with a reasonable chance of success, not issue a moral judgment on this presidency.

Barr’s summary makes clear that there was no coordinated high-level conspiracy between Russia and Trump to tilt the 2016 presidential election in his favor. Never mind the president’s strange behavior, such as his repeated refusal to so much as admit that Russian President Vladimir Putin tried to help him win. And chalk up the many connections between various Trump aides and Russian operatives in 2016 as either meaningless low-level contacts, apparently, or coincidences that don’t add up to a larger pattern.

Maybe former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, for instance, was simply trying to repay his multimillion dollar debt to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska when he passed internal polling numbers to his former business partner, Konstantin Kilimnik. Maybe George Papadopoulos, whose previous claim to fame was serving in the Model United Nations, was merely puffing himself up when he drunkenly told an Australian ambassador that Russia had Hillary Clinton’s missing emails—a meeting that reportedly alarmed FBI officials and set off the Russiagate inquiry.

A lot of other weird stuff happened, from the infamous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Russians offering dirt on Clinton to the alleged and plausibly sinister scheme by Michael Flynn and Kushner to set up a back channel to Moscow via the Russian Embassy in Washington. Remember Jeff Sessions’ undisclosed meeting with Ambassador Sergey Kislyak? Carter Page, who practically walked around with a “Kick Me, I’m a Russian Stooge” sign taped to his back? Mariia Butina?

But there are possible explanations for all these oddities that don’t amount to a grand conspiracy to steal an election in exchange for, say, sanctions relief or recognition of Putin’s annexation of Crimea. Maybe the Russians forged connections to Trump’s team on the off-chance their efforts to elect him would work. Maybe the meetings themselves were a form of kompromat—because Moscow knew that revealing them would be embarrassing. Maybe different groups of Russians simply saw the same opportunity in Trump’s Russophilia and acted independently.

As for all the lying Trump associates did about their Russia contacts, you can imagine explanations for that too: Practiced liars tend to lie as a matter of habit. And maybe they mistakenly thought they were trying to protect the president and themselves. People make stupid and irrational decisions—especially under pressure.

We should all be aware of the dangers of confirmation bias, the bad habit of interpreting evidence to fit our pre-cooked conclusions. That’s been a major peril of the Russiagate story, and I’m sure I’ve been guilty of it on occasion. News outlets have hyped and torqued up stories about purported links between Trump and Russia that have evaporated on close inspection. Even carefully reported and cautiously written scoops have been subject to overheated interpretation once they landed on Twitter and cable news. (Baby cannon, anyone?)

But there are also many aspects of Trump’s behavior toward Russia, both as a candidate and as president, that remain baffling. His obsession with that Kremlin bogeyman, NATO. His failure to disclose his pursuit of a hotel project in Moscow even as he ran for the White House, and his subsequent lying about it. His real estate business’ many years of heavy reliance on Russian money.

Strangest of all is Trump’s relationship with Putin, whom he never criticizes directly. Flash back to that fawning July 2018 news conference in Helsinki, at which Trump stood next to his Russian counterpart and said, “I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today.” It remains one of the more bizarre performances by an American president abroad.

Interestingly, though, we have gotten some recent clues that might—I repeat, might—help us understand where Trump is coming from. Consider his relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, whose regime is an order of magnitude more odious even than Putin’s. Trump has wooed Kim like a desperate suitor, brushing aside the objections of his own advisers. This week, Trump tweeted his rejection of a new round of large-scale sanctions his administration had just imposed on Pyongyang. The reversal came, the White House gamely explained, because Trump “likes” Kim—a man who once assassinated his own half-brother and machine-guns his internal foes.

There are two common threads here. One is that Trump covets the power these authoritarian leaders exert over their own societies, and he hasn’t been shy about saying so. The second is that he is desperate for a big diplomatic win, be it some sort of great-power compact with Russia, the end of North Korea’s nuclear program or a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.

Forget about the likelihood or wisdom of any such deals; the point is that Trump is in the habit of flattering, cajoling and wheedling the objects of his affection to get what he wants—whether it’s Putin, Kim or (allegedly!) Stormy Daniels. So maybe there’s nothing special about Putin after all.

And what of Trump’s constant attacks on the Russia probe, the firing of FBI Director James Comey, the sniping at Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, the endless cries of “witch hunt,” and so on? Isn’t that suspicious?

Sure, but consider an alternative theory: He couldn’t be sure what the investigation would dig up, so he used the scorched-earth tactics he learned from his mentor, attack-lawyer Roy Cohn, just in case. Why did the scorpion sting the frog? Because that’s what scorpions do.

So, as you digest Barr’s very limited four-page summary, consider the possibility—maybe even the likelihood—that the whole thing has been a big misunderstanding.

None of which entirely clears Trump. It’s not moving the goal posts, as some would have it, to note that the Southern District of New York and other prosecutorial bodies are still investigating various aspects of Trumpdom. It’s just a fact. And it’s not moving the goal posts to point out the damning truth that Trump’s campaign manager, his deputy campaign manager and his national security adviser have all been convicted of crimes.

As to whether this more charitable interpretation of his dance with Moscow exonerates Trump, that’s now for Congress—and ultimately the voters—to judge. But we can be certain of one thing: If Trump had colluded with Russia, Mueller likely would have found out.

And as for the great debate about collusion, it depends on what you mean. It seems quite clear now that Trump did not collude with Putin to game the 2016 presidential election. Why he still seems to want to collude with Putin to reshape U.S. foreign policy remains a mystery.

