I mean, members of his campaign staff could have been on the phone with lots of different foreign countries. It didn't have to be that one. They could have been on the phone with friendly foreign countries like England, or France, or Spain.
They could have been on the phone with countries that we're not particularly friendly with that we don't take especially seriously as a threat. Like Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia, or North Korea or something like that.
But no. It had to be Russia. They had to pick the one country that literally every generation of voting Americans is going to think of as the biggest baddest most ENEMY enemy country that we have.
It's like a caricature. It's like a cartoon of people being evil and corrupt. It's like they thought if they were bad enough, they'd be so bad no one would take any of it seriously, because it all sounds so ridiculous.
If this were an espionage novel, no one would publish it. It's ridiculous; it has every terrible trope in it, executed poorly, and obviously.
And it's only chapter 3.