This is a much more reasoned response, so thanks for that! But even with all that bad rhetoric, there is still not a majority of the public that have bought into the president's lies, as is evidenced by polling data.
So, you don't see it as damaging that we have a president willing to lie about core issues of our democracy? The fact that the majority of the population don't believe his lies does not reassure me because he is the one who is making the decisions. If the majority of the population held much sway, he would be gone (with approval ratings currently 35%-37%). I want the guy in charge to be able to call shots without his own ego and short term interests being the primary concern behind those decisions!
I think the best indicator that would speak to your concern was the midterm election. It had a few problems here and there, but was as smooth and successful as any other election in recent history. Faith in the instution of elections seems unshaken from where I sit.
That is an argument, but it seem woefully short of awareness that Putin "plays chess", not checkers; Putin has been around for a long time and will most likely continue to be around for much longer. He is playing a long-term game. Why would he waste significant effort on manipulating the mid-terms? From Putin's perspective everything happening in the US is great! Trump has people questioning the actions of our intelligence agencies as politically unfair. We have people who can play chess with Putin, but they are in the form of career military and intelligence; however, Trump has eliminated their presence in the WH and replaced them with sycophants! The distance between Trump and people who "play chess" has increased quite a bit. The advent of Trump making major military decisions without consulting or valuing opinions of the people who have made it their career to analyze what is going on in the world erodes morale and has led to people of high integrity to resign because they cannot carry out his decisions. The ones who are left have effectively been "demoted" after watching their superiors "wasted" by this administration. When key decisions need to be made quickly, our country is weaker now than it has ever been in my lifetime!
So why would Putin invest any more into the Mid-term elections than enough to lull us into a false sense that we have things under under control and that the Russians don't have any significant cards left to play. Putin's strategy runs deeper than "rock, paper, scissors" and it is a mistake to evaluate his actions in the context of "I showing you exactly what I have"... he is only showing us what he wants us to see.
I think the real problem that plagues us more generally is that we don't know how to talk to each other. "You" (not really you) assume that because I disagree with you on policy that I don't want what's best for the country. And "I" (again, not really) assume you must be an idiot for not following my logic on policy prescriptions. This is an area where Trump is hurting us by not leading by example. There is other blame in other offices and news media, but the president should rise above all that in my opinion.
I agree, Trump coaches everything as "them against us" (or, really "me" in Trumps case). Everything is adversarial. His actions are about dividing and separating people, not unifying!
On the Russia question, I hope you can show me where I am way off-base or simply wrong, but as I see it after they lost the cold war, it became obvious they could not
beat us. However, they still wanted to maintain relevance in the world. Putin has a strategy for this and it hinges on the ability to erode the position of stronger countries (and the European Union). Look at where Russia is utilizing the influence they have! They have been in the business of producing immigrants for Europe and now, conspicuously (with their interference in Venezuela),immigrants for the US. He knows this will agitate conflict of humanitarian/religious (do unto others as you would have them do unto you) values and weaken the cohesion of the populations.
PS - references to Putin, of course, refer to Putin and his staff which has the kind of unity of purpose we can only dream of at this point.
