Thread by @maxbergmann

I’m a big @mashagessen fan and this is a smart take. But the big point that I think she (and many Russian liberals/sceptics) miss is that no one had to be that competent to interfere in our election. It just took a will to do so. We were wide open. 1/ newyorker.com/news/our-colum…

What happened here is not complicated. Trump started to win the primary. Russian intel hacks DNC/Podesta in March 16 - using a fishing email. In April-June the Russians tell the Trump campaign we got “dirt.” Trump camp says “I love it.” They meet, repeatedly... 2/

GRU give dirt to WikiLeaks. They post it. Trump campaigns on it.

Now there are lots of threads. Trump’s business links to Russia. Manafort/Deripaska, Flynn, Cambridge Analytica, etc.

But none require the Kremlin to have a crystal ball. They just needed a willing partner. 3/

There was also a perfect storm. The USG was blind to this threat. Big tech left us all exposed and fragmented the media. Russia wanted to hit back after US-EU sanctions. And the GOP nominated someone who was totally corrupt. 4/

Gessen is totally right that a lot of the coverage has wrongly hyped Putin as some crystal ball mastermind and has mischaracterized how Russia works.

But she’s also underestimated the huge political impact from a US campaign working w/ a hostile foreign intelligence agency.