Interview · moment 15 of 23
Russian Hacking, Trump, and the Blackmail Question
from Russia's Super Mafia · #98
Audio-only archive episode — no video to seek.
5 minGuest
Galeotti lays out his view that Russia ran an active influence campaign mainly to sow chaos rather than elect Trump specifically, and pushes back on Trump-as-Russian-agent theories, framing Trump's Russia ties as greed and bad business rather than coordinated collusion.
- 37:05Russian hacking campaign was real, linked to Russian intelligence service, but Russians weren't trying to get Trump elected.
- 37:34A Russian foreign ministry official told Tim before the election that the American establishment would never allow Trump to win.
- 37:51Russians feared Clinton presidency because they believed she was anti-Russian and would try to bring down Putin.
- 38:20Tim distinguishes between Russian interference and the claim that Trump is a Kremlin puppet or in debt to Russian organized crime.
- 38:51Anyone wealthy and prominent in Russia gets watched; Trump would be no exception, but that doesn't prove control.
- 39:15American journalists keep calling Tim with Trump Tower real estate transactions, asking him to confirm Russian organized crime links.
- 39:48Trump's actual story is a bad businessman whose organization was a pyramid scheme constantly needing investors from anywhere.
- 40:13Trump Tower accepts money from dodgy Russians, Kazakhs, and Saudis, but buying apartments doesn't mean they own Trump.