All these months later, without so much as a shred of evidence, anti-Trump forces still have Russia on the brain.

In what Joy Reid tagged as “Russia-gate,” the MSNBC anchor shared a theory where the Kremlin, motivated by a “desperate quest for sanction relief” imposed by former President Barack Obama after Russia invaded Crimea, hatched a diabolical plan to seize on Donald Trump’s greed in wanting to build a Trump Tower in Moscow to turn him into an “apparatchik” who would grant them the desired relief.

As far-fetched as that may sound, it was tame in comparison to what MSNBC analyst Malcolm Nance would propose.

Nance, a career intelligence and counterterrorism officer, responded to Reid’s take by suggested Moscow started grooming Trump to be president in 1987. He also said “the first contact” with Trump in this regard started “the night Mitt Romney failed to beat Barack Obama.”

Nance said in response to Reid’s premise, “I think if that’s the case then the Russians evaluated this and made that determination in 1987 when they were the Soviet Union and Donald Trump went over there to try and build a hotel in St. Petersburg and in Moscow.”

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“As they transitioned to the Russian Federation, they just kept this personality in an envelope and saw over time that he was really going to be an asset to them,” he said.

To offer a little perspective, Nance has previously suggested that President Trump is so indebted to Russia that he “may eliminate or downgrade NATO” because he’d “feel the need to start paying them off.”

According to Nance, the clever Russians put their plan to make Trump president of the United States into action in 2012.

“However I really — based on my reporting, this first contact with Donald Trump related to the presidency started the night that Mitt Romney failed to defeat Barack Obama,” Nance posited. “That’s 2012. Within 12 months they stood up the internet research agency and started doing operations to support him.

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“He was meeting at Miss Universe with the top richest men in Moscow, then when Russia invaded Crimea, Donald Trump was already primed and supporting Vladimir Putin over the president of the United States in his tweets,” he continued. “So he was primed up. Did the execute order go in 2014? I think it was earlier than that, but they were definitely on board by that time.”

So, for those following along at home, Nance is proposing that Russia is playing 3-D chess, knowing that when they invaded Crimea in 2014 that President Obama would respond with sanctions. To overcome the sanctions, they started working two years before the invasion to implant an apparatchik in the White House after Obama to ease said sanctions.