Some thoughts:
-- If your pushback on this is 'well the CIA, NSA, etc. would know and would stop it..', I only ask you to think about how those agencies were used in an effort to go to war in Iraq. These are not omnipotent agencies that get to decide the law.
-- If your pushback on this is that this is fucking crazy, you're right. This is insanity of the highest order ... and yet, Donald Trump a racist, xenophobic, ignorant con-man reality star is on the doorstep of the most powerful office in the world.
-- If your pushback on this is this is just TPM's Josh Marshall editorializing and stringing together circumstantial evidence, that's just not completely true. This story and these facts have been picked up by several outlets: It's a fact he's been borrowing money from Russian sources for years. It's a fact Trump has a pro-Putin stance in everything he's said from day 1 as a candidate. It's a fact Trump's team removed language on Ukraine from the GOP platform. It's a fact Trump questioned whether or not the US would come to the aid of its NATO allies. These aren't "he likes Putin so maybe he's a spy" theories. These are facts when taken together present a deeply troubling amount of evidence that Trump's motivations are clearly compromised. And that's the BEST reading of the evidence.
-- That Manafort worked for a pro-Russian Ukraine and these WikiLeaks DNC releases follow Russian infiltration is circumstantial can't be denied, but they too are
facts.
-- And you can't say any of the above about
any other candidate. NONE! You think Hillary, Bernie, Cruz, or Rubio would be caught within a mile of Russian influence or questioning commitments to NATO allies?
-- If your pushback is 'this has been happening in Britain for years', I'm not sure that's a good argument, esp following Brexit and the increasing destabilization of Europe for years.
I dunno. The only argument to this being scary as shit that I've seen work is that this is too textbook comicbook-level villainy to be possible. And yet...