Did Collusion go the other way?

[zaj]

Did Trump give data to the Russians? Maybe, but I am wondering if the Russians shaped the messaging around Trump's campaign.

I've been reading this amazing article by Roger McNamee, an early investor and key advisor to Zuckerberg at Facebook.

https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/january-february-march-2018/how-to-fix-facebook-before-it-fixes-us/#.WlJCwtx0qu8.twitter

He's walking through his amazing take on the nature of Facebook and how it needs to change to avoid the even greater damage to society... and he mentions this...

"With respect to the election meddling, we shared a few hypotheses based on our knowledge of how Facebook works. We started with a question: Why was Congress focused exclusively on collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign in 2016? The Russian interference, we reasoned, probably began long before the presidential election campaign itself. We hypothesized that those early efforts likely involved amplifying polarizing issues, such as immigration, white supremacy, gun rights, and secession. (We already knew that the California secession site had been hosted in Russia.) We suggested that Trump had been nominated because he alone among Republicans based his campaign on the kinds of themes the Russians chose for their interference."

Who developed the polarizing issues strategy with Russia? Was it Breitbart? Did Breitbart and Russia influence Trump's messaging?

We have been asking the question from one direction (Trump helped Russia to help Trump), but maybe it flowed the other direction?

[L. Coyote]

1. Did Trump hire the Russians before he announced? Does Manasfort run Russian troll/hacker farm?

Manafort was already operating in Russia and was working to fx elections and prop up dictators. Did he have all the covert operations up and running ready to deploy for Trump? Did Trump arrange for the Manafort/Russian help before he committed to the race?