Donald Trump kept the Miss Universe Pageant true to its origins as a swimsuit competition by setting the ceremony in warm-weather locations. Only once did Trump steer the pageant away from temperate environments--in November, 2013, when Miss Universe took place in Russia.
Today, the Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow looks like a harbinger of the Trump campaign and Presidency, featuring some of the same themes and characters. Miss Universe represents a paradigmatic example of Trump's business style in action--the exaggerations that teeter into lies, the willingness to embrace dubious partners, the hunger for glamour and recognition. Trump got away with this kind of behavior for decades, and he played by the same rules during his run for the Presidency.
Last Friday, Robert Mueller, the special counsel, unveiled the indictment of thirteen Russian nationals, and three Russian organizations, on charges that they conspired to throw the 2016 election to Trump. The indictment does not explicitly assert that Trump or his campaign knowingly participated in the Russian conspiracy. Trump recognized that the pageant was a useful vehicle for expanding his reach overseas, and no country so consistently kindled his ambitions as Russia.
The extent of Trump's financial ties to Russia remains unclear, but he appears to have had a number of investors and business partners from the former Soviet Union. In 2008, Donald Trump, Jr. told the audience at a real-estate conference, "Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets...We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia."
Trump, it seems, has never asked his top intelligence officials for an accounting of Russian activities during the campaign or for a plan to stop such efforts from continuing in the future. As a result, the quest for accountability rests largely with the Mueller investigation, which is trying to determine whether Trump and his campaign staff knew about, encouraged, or sponsored the Russian efforts.
Source: By Jeffrey Toobin in The New Yorker, February 26, 2018