Milbank: Love of conspiracy theories would backfire this time

• Another adviser, Carter Page, has close ties to Gazprom, the Russian energy company under Putin’s thumb.

• One of the only interferences the campaign made in the Republican platform was to remove language calling for “providing lethal defensive weapons” to Ukraine in its fight against Russian-backed separatists.

• The candidate cast doubt on the utility of NATO and said he might not come to the aid of Baltic members of the alliance attacked by Russia.

• Putin has aimed to destabilize rival powers by supporting extremist parties in several European countries. His state news outlets have been heavily supportive of the candidate.

• Russian intelligence hacked the Democratic National Committee and, experts say, handed the emails to WikiLeaks for release on the eve of the Democratic convention.

If the Clinton campaign were so extensively interwoven with Putin’s Russia, it’s a safe bet that Trump would be demanding that Clinton release her tax returns to prove that she’s not beholden to Putin — just as he demanded that Obama release his birth certificate.

What would Trump say?

He would also very likely float allegations masquerading as questions by using the phrases “a lot of people have said” or “I’m hearing,” or “there’s something we don’t know about.” But Trump, I’m hearing, won’t be doing that in this case. So let’s help him. The following are all phrases Trump has used to float conspiracy theories — but this time applied to his Putin ties , combined with wild Trump-style speculation.

A lot of people have said Putin is trying to get Trump elected so he can blackmail the American president. Somebody told me Trump would go out of business if Putin took back all the Russian money he let Trump have. I don’t know exactly what’s going on, but I just heard Trump’s airplane would be grounded.

Manafort helping the oligarchs? Flynn having dinner with Putin? Page getting money from Gazprom? No coincidence! Now it’s coming out that Putin wants to destabilize America. There’s something fishy about the whole thing.

And why did Trump propose changing NATO and Ukraine policy in ways that would benefit Putin? Obviously some people think it’s evil intentions. I think it’s incompetence. Regardless, a lot of people think it’s evil intentions.

I don’t bring up the possibility that Trump has already been bribed or blackmailed by Putin because I don’t know enough to really discuss it. I will say there are people who continue to bring it up because they think it was absolutely bribery and blackmail. I don’t do that because I don’t think it’s fair.

Why is Trump so emphatic about not talking about his Putin connections? He gets it better than anybody understands. There’s something going on. There’s something we don’t know about. I don’t know. All I know is what’s on the Internet. Wow!