NYT's Michelle Goldberg: "We Don't Know If Putin Is His Handler, His Hero Or His Co-Conspirator"

New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg lays out the case that President Trump is only president because of Russia on ABC's 'This Week' roundtable:

MICHELLE GOLDBERG, NYT: Look, I think that increasingly to believe that the president isn’t compromised requires such a leap of faith that requires so many coincidences and kind of inexplicable behavioral choices. I think that the truth is probably what is right in front of us, which is that Donald Trump was a – kind of a conman, a third tier failed businessman whose fortunes were rescued by Russian oligarchs.

He presented himself as a kind of titan of industry, which everybody knows anything about him knew was ridiculous, he became president with the direct intervention of Putin, he sees his fortunes as inseparable from Putin’s.

He either – we don’t know, I think, if Putin is his handler, his hero or his co-conspirator, but that’s obviously where his loyalty lies as opposed to lying with the American people. And I think increasingly when you look at the role that the NRA has played all of this, you know. I think that, you know, the Republican servility has been breathtaking to me, and really confusing because you do think that, you know, if nothing else these people are patriots. They have some baseline loyalty to country over party, and yet they've lied down for Trump in this way that I mean people -- people come up to me on the street. They find it unbelievable.

And I think that one of the things that came out this week with the NRA is that maybe they are not just, you know, craven, some of them are also complicit because the NRA didn't just help Trump, it helped them all.