In the hours after Mr. Trump’s statement, foreign policy and legal analysts struggled to articulate the scale of his deviation from political norms. Were Russia to follow Mr. Trump’s suggestion, the foreign intervention into American politics would be among the most severe of the past century. More than that, Mr. Trump seemed to be suggesting that Russia should violate United States law on his behalf. “This is unprecedented — it is one of those things that seems to be genuinely new in international relations,” said Paul Musgrave, a University of Massachusetts professor who studies American foreign policy. Mr. Trump, in openly inviting such foreign interference, was undercutting one of the most fundamental national interests of a democratic state.

Source: New York Times July 28, 2016 09:00 UTC