The Trump administration, of course, had made those concessions to Putin far more explicit. Trump’s nihilistic denials had made Russia’s hacking of American election targets a subject for debate—in the face of mounting, incontrovertible evidence—leaving no space for even a discussion of the vastly more aggressive hacking of critical institutions in Ukraine. At the same time, Trump had overtly praised Putin, repeatedly calling him a “strong leader” in public comments and even complimenting his response to the Obama administration’s sanctions. Meanwhile, his administration’s broader isolationism
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