monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Still butthurt over 2016, is what we're seeing across the pond.

The Russians (and many other nations as well - including ours) have been using disinformation and other like devices to undermine potential opponents for many decades.

Mr. Pence, who was also elected in 2016, would assume the presidency and the administration would remain the same.

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The Russians (and many other nations as well - including ours) have been using disinformation and other like devices to undermine potential opponents for many decades.

Since neither Russia nor China are democracies they are much less susceptible to the sort of disinformation campaigns and election meddling Russia has been actively running in Western Europe and the USA. I'm surprised you aren't more concerned with the effect Putin's efforts have had on the NATO alliance, which was once pretty unified and is now in danger of degenerating into a collection of squabbling states, some of which are on the road to authoritarianism.

If you have any specific evidence connecting Putin disinformation to the weakening of NATO, I'd like to see it.

The platform won't be finalized until the nominee is chosen.

George is politically blind.

You're completely discounting the damage the DNC has done...

...in their inane and baseless impeachment games.

the prospect of future presidents sidelining the State Department, ignoring the national security establishment, dismissing the intelligence services, and vilifying the FBI raises legitimate concern in the minds of many USAmericans.

Not "baseless".

WASHINGTON — President Trump told his national security adviser in August that he wanted to continue freezing $391 million in security assistance to Ukraine until officials there helped with investigations into Democrats including the Bidens, according to an unpublished manuscript by the former adviser, John R. Bolton.

The president’s statement as described by Mr. Bolton could undercut a key element of his impeachment defense: that the holdup in aid was separate from Mr. Trump’s requests that Ukraine announce investigations into his perceived enemies, including former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his son Hunter Biden, who had worked for a Ukrainian energy firm while his father was in office.

Mr. Bolton’s explosive account of the matter at the center of Mr. Trump’s impeachment trial, the third in American history, was included in drafts of a manuscript he has circulated in recent weeks to close associates. He also sent a draft to the White House for a standard review process for some current and former administration officials who write books.

Multiple people described Mr. Bolton’s account of the Ukraine affair.

The book presents an outline of what Mr. Bolton might testify to if he is called as a witness in the Senate impeachment trial, the people said. The White House could use the pre-publication review process, which has no set time frame, to delay or even kill the book’s publication or omit key passages.

Over dozens of pages, Mr. Bolton described how the Ukraine affair unfolded over several months until he departed the White House in September. He described not only the president’s private disparagement of Ukraine but also new details about senior cabinet officials who have publicly tried to sidestep involvement.

For example, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo acknowledged privately that there was no basis to claims by the president’s lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani that the ambassador to Ukraine was corrupt and believed Mr. Giuliani may have been acting on behalf of other clients, Mr. Bolton wrote.

Mr. Bolton also said that after the president’s July phone call with the president of Ukraine, he raised with Attorney General William P. Barr his concerns about Mr. Giuliani, who was pursuing a shadow Ukraine policy encouraged by the president, and told Mr. Barr that the president had mentioned him on the call. A spokeswoman for Mr. Barr denied that he learned of the call from Mr. Bolton; the Justice Department has said he learned about it only in mid-August.

And the acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, was present for at least one phone call where the president and Mr. Giuliani discussed the ambassador, Mr. Bolton wrote. Mr. Mulvaney has told associates he would always step away when the president spoke with his lawyer to protect their attorney-client privilege.

During a previously reported May 23 meeting where top advisers and Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, briefed him about their trip to Kyiv for the inauguration of President Volodymyr Zelensky, Mr. Trump railed about Ukraine trying to damage him and mentioned a conspiracy theory about a hacked Democratic server, according to Mr. Bolton.

(...)

[While I'm not psychologically invested in any particular outcome, the prospect of future presidents sidelining the State Department, ignoring the national security establishment, dismissing the intelligence services, and vilifying the FBI raises legitimate concern in the minds of many USAmericans.

While I'm not psychologically invested in any particular outcome, the prospect of future presidents sidelining the State Department, ignoring the national security establishment, dismissing the intelligence services, and vilifying the FBI raises legitimate concern in the minds of many USAmericans.

President Trump has ample reasons to distrust them all.