Trump’s Actions Aren’t Just Disgraceful, They’re Borderline Treasonous
Hillary Clinton was Right to call Trump a Puppet of Russia

Despite the various indications and the increasing body of evidence, we don’t know for sure if Trump has or had any sort of illegal involvement with Russia, whether it be collusion related to the 2016 presidential campaign or just undisclosed financial ties and conflicts of interest. The story has been going on for quite some time now, with increasing levels of concern from the left and increasing levels of skepticism and cries of “fake news” from the right.
But while this is an important issue, it’s one that is separate from another issue related to Russia that is just as important, if not more: Russia’s interference in the 2016 US Presidential Election, and their attempt to help Donald Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton. And unlike the former, this matter is not just speculation. It’s not fake news, it’s not “more likely than not”, and it’s not a “It might have happened, it might have been Russia, it might have not, it might have been someone else, but we can’t really say for sure” kind of deal. It’s been confirmed by the intelligence community. It happened. And evidence points toward the notion that it was done with the intention of helping Trump and hurting Clinton. But don’t take it from me, take it from James Comey, former director of the FBI (who we all know certainly isn’t biased for Hillary Clinton):
“There should be no fuzz on this whatsoever. The Russians interfered in our election during the 2016 cycle. They did it with purpose, they did it with sophistication, they did it with overwhelming technical efforts and it was an active measures campaign driven from the top of that government. There should be no fuzz on that.”
To be fair, helping Trump and hurting Clinton wasn’t the Russians’ only goal. But even so, who the Russians were trying to help should be secondary to the act of interference itself. This shouldn’t be a partisan issue, and your reaction to it shouldn’t be contingent upon who you support, on whether you’re a Democrat or Republican, on whether you like Trump or dislike Clinton. This is a confirmed attack by a hostile foreign power on the very fabric of what constitutes our democracy: free and fair elections. It’s an attack on all of us as a country, not just those of us that wanted Hillary Clinton. If we are no longer able to freely and independently choose who we want to lead our country, then we all lose. The fact that this has not gotten more coverage, has not been greater cause for alarm, is baffling to me.
Despite all this, despite the fact that Russia, an enemy, succeeded in attacking us — something they planned in a very deliberate manner — Trump seems more intent on treating Russia as a friend than a foe. Trump has a seemingly endless list of enemies and is often ready to hop into a fight quicker than Tucker Carlson, and yet he’s spoken seemingly nothing but praise for Putin. Some might say that Trump is just trying to have good foreign relations and that there’s nothing wrong with that. That line of thought is fine, but when someone attacks you, they’re making it clear that they’re not your friend. So you don’t treat them as such — at least not without letting them know what they did was wrong and you won’t tolerate it. Besides, Mr. “America First”, who ran on a very isolationist (and xenophobic) platform (and who recently announced plans to pull out of the Paris Accord because of his mistaken belief that it would hurt American jobs), has never been one to be friendly to other world leaders (see his recent critiques of Germany and Australia). His admiration for and desire to work with Putin likely has more to do with his admiration for Authoritarian dictators than it does any sense of diplomacy.
But make no mistake. Putin is an enemy. He made that clear during this past election. And insofar as Trump is choosing to cooperate with Putin, to not only not hold him accountable for his actions but to look the other way entirely, Trump is acting against the interests of the United States. He is siding with the man whose goal is to weaken us, whose Authoritarian tendencies are a threat to the very western values Trump himself claims to care so much about protecting. Some would call that Treason.
How so? Well, Trump has already shared classified intelligence information from Israel with Russia, and in doing so has betrayed and weakened our alliances, given inside information to the enemy, and jeopardized a crucial source of intel. But this past weekend he went a step further, as revealed by his latest tweetstorm. Trump not only let Putin off the hook for his attack — doing so by apparently taking the word of Putin himself over our intelligence communities (and then attacking said intelligence communities, along with the “fake news” that reported it)— but vowed to “move forward in working constructively with Russia”, including partnering together to form “an impenetrable Cyber Security Unit”. The irony of that statement is absolutely mind-boggling.
Now, despite popular belief, Trump really isn’t that complicated a person, and it’s not hard to speculate on his motives for acting this way. He’s incredibly fragile and insecure, and this is especially so with regard to the legitimacy of his own presidency. He can’t stand the idea that he didn’t really win according to his own merits and that he somehow might be an illegitimate president. It’s why he’ll make up fantasies about illegal aliens taking away his popular vote win. It’s why he constantly keeps bringing up his victory, why he does absurd things like hand out electoral maps in the middle of interviews. For someone like Trump, where any perception of weakness is so incredibly painful and threatening to his self image, it’s much easier to believe that there was no foreign election interference. For if there were, it would suggest that his victory was at least partially not of his own merit. Trump creates his own fantasy world, his own safe space, and for him, any threat to his ego becomes “fake news”. He simply believes what makes him the most comfortable, and in this case, that means to deny the Russia attack.
But Trump’s motives are far less important than his actions. And in this case, Trump is actively taking steps to partner and collaborate with a foreign power whose aim is to weaken the United States. In refusing to hold Putin accountable, Trump himself is weakening the United States. He’s showing that the attack was okay, he’s siding with our enemy over our institutions, and he’s opening us up to more attacks like it in the future. Trump is not on America’s side, and this should be concerning to all of us.
When explaining why Putin would prefer Trump over herself, Hillary Clinton seemed to hit a nerve when suggesting that Putin would prefer to have a puppet as President of the United States. And she was absolutely right. Trump has shown us that he’s weak, easily manipulated, and will bend to the will of our enemies so long as they make him feel good. He places his ego over the good of the country. Putin has to be loving this right now. He got exactly what he wanted, and he’s facing no consequences for it. In fact, he’s getting a free pass from the leader of the very country he attacked.
Now quickly, before I end this piece, it’s worth mentioning the GOP’s role in all this. Several GOP senators have stepped up and expressed concern over Trump’s tweets regarding Putin and Russia. However, this all rings hollow to me. We’re starting to see a similar pattern, and it’s one that we saw all throughout the election cycle. Prominent GOP figures would express concern over Trump’s words or actions after he did something stupid or alarming, but at the end of the day, they would still endorse him, vote for him, and vote for his policies. Republicans seem more interested in protecting their power than they do in protecting the country. It’s been inconceivable for me to watch Republicans churn out made up scandal over made up scandal to deligitimize the likes of Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton, yet turn the other way from (among many other things), a very real attack on our Democracy. But I guess it’s all okay as long as it leads to tax cuts and liberal tears.
In this day and age of craziness, it’s impossible to know what will happen next. Maybe Trump will be impeached, maybe he’ll serve another term. Maybe this is the end of our democracy as we know it, or maybe it’s nothing more than a blip on the radar.
But regardless of what the effects of all this end up being, there has to come a point where congressional Republicans are held accountable for their willingness to look away. This isn’t just about Trump. This is about the people who decided that an attack on our country was okay as long as the attack ultimately benefitted them.
Trump and his supporters — both on the internet and among the conservative media empire — when pressed regarding the Russia influence, turn to the same sad, worn out deflections: a) Call it Fake News, b) Blame Barack Obama, or C) Change the topic to Hillary Clinton’s emails. But at some point, we need to start calling Trump’s willingness to partner with our enemy what it is: Treason.
