Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin

“The indictment says they wanted to promote discord in the United States and undermine public confidence in the democracy,” Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said in announcing the indictment of 13 Russians for interfering in the 2016 elections. “We must not allow them to succeed.” You know who else promoted discord and undermined public confidence in democracy? Donald Trump. That was Trump’s overarching message strategy: racial discord and a belief that the political system was rigged and needed a strongman to fix everything—for white people, anyway. But the similarities between the Russian strategy laid out in the indictment and the Trump campaign’s strategy get a whole lot more specific than that broad message of suspicion and fear.

Trump portrayed everything and everyone but himself as dirty—it was all “Crooked Hillary” and “Lying Ted” (okay, that second one is a stopped clock situation). He pushed claims that the Democratic National Committee had somehow caused Bernie Sanders to lose the Democratic primary to divide Democrats. To listen to him, every politician’s vote was for sale, and—having tried to buy his share of politicians—he could for some reason be trusted to be different.

The Russians pushed Jill Stein’s candidacy. Guess what:

x Promoting Stein was a big part of the Manafort campaign strategy in late spring/early summer https://t.co/QjoHRWB7UJ — Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) February 16, 2018

Just as Trump tried to push the story that Bernie was robbed by a corrupt establishment: