Mar 15 2018 28 mins
With the daily headlines on Russia – Nunes memos, Mueller indictments, Trump denials, continual cable TV panels – it’s easy to miss a powerful and – as it turns out, complicated – question: How did Russia happen? How did we get here?
For many of us, the so-called “Russia story” started in 2015 with Donald Trump. It continued with Paul Manafort and Carter Page and WikiLeaks and, of course, picked up steam with Internet Bots and cyber war and what we now know is a continuing massive, coordinated attack on our democracy – on our very way of life.
But as with any major attack, these things don’t just appear out of nowhere. Sometimes, like 9/11, the signs were there and once missed, create the opportunity for something much, much worse.
So how did Russia occur? What happened during Trump’s campaign – and since? And how has all of that come together to put Trump and us in the situation – the divided democracy – we all now face?
That’s the incredible road map and story put together by two of our country’s leading investigative journalists, Michael Isikoff and David Corn in their new book: “RUSSIAN ROULETTE: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Trump.”
You know them both. Michael and David are longtime award-winning reporters and analysts. Michael is chief investigative correspondent for Yahoo News. Previously, he was an investigative correspondent for NBC as well as a staff writer for Newsweek and the Washington Post. Isikoff has written two best-sellers. David is the Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones magazine, MSNBC analyst, and author of three New York Times bestsellers.