1. Russia now moving to attack conservatives who won't toe the Putin line. "The shift to attacking conservative think tanks underscores the Russian intelligence agency’s goals: to disrupt any institutions challenging Moscow and President Putin." nyti.ms/2wdTbB7
2. What we're seeing here is a Trump-enabled hostile takeover of the @gop. Back in December 2016 I thot that "hostile takeover" was the best way to conceptualize what Trump & Bannon were up to. That was before "the Russia stuff" really started coming out.
3. The irony, of course, is that the mainstream @gop has been protecting Trump non-stop (a few sad tweets notwithstanding). Now it appears that some longstanding pillars of the GOP/conservative movement have become the new targets for Russian hacking and disinformation.
5. Regardless, this gives a new dimension to my December 2016 concerns about Trump's "hostile takeover." At the time I was mostly concerned about Bannon's efforts to push the @gop over the edge into an avowedly white nationalist party. That work has proceeded apace...
6. But it never occurred to me then that the "hostile takeover" of the @gop might also be actively and knowingly abetted by a hostile foreign power like Russia.
7. To be clear, there's no evidence that this attack on conservative, anti-Putin think tanks was done with the knowledge or cooperation of any Americans in or out of the Trump camp.
8. That said, both Putin and Trump think that they would benefit from purging the @gop ranks of those who are not entirely loyal to the program. Trump wants fewer McCains and Rubios, more Nuneses and Rohrbachers. That would serve Putin's interests as well.
