We heard a lot about collusion with Russia, or allegations about a connection between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.
A few months ago, we read this from Adam Taylor who writes about foreign affairs for The Washington Post:
In his memoir, published as “Khrushchev Remembers” in 1970, Khrushchev said he told other members of the Soviet leadership: “If Nixon becomes President, I don’t believe he will contribute to an improvement of relations between our two countries.”
Later, he allegedly said the same thing to President Kennedy directly at the Vienna meeting. JFK laughed about it but Khrushchev was dead serious that the USSR preferred JFK over Nixon.
Did the USSR help elected JFK? We will never know. The 1960 election was decided by 140,000 votes out of 76 million cast. It was such a close election that hundreds of factors could have made the difference.
My own opinion is that the USSR understood that VP Nixon was more prepared for the presidency than the younger and inexperienced Senator Kennedy. However, I don’t see any evidence that the USSR elected JFK.
As we know, the two men again during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Before that, President Kennedy had to face a crisis in Berlin.
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