From Russia With Love
Trump’s tweet from the morning of January 11th is an astonishingly stupid and utterly bald-faced lie:
This tweet — this particular lie — that “I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA — NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!” is so transparently and demonstrably false that it practically begs for an independent commission/prosecutor to investigate his secret contacts so that we can determine just how beholden he is, and determine the extent to which he will try to shape U.S. foreign policy to serve the Trump Organization’s business interests.
There have been dozens of articles documenting what’s known about his ties to Russians including to Russian mobsters and fraudsters — including those who live in Trump Tower and have defrauded Americans. (See more here and here.) A slightly-more-benign example of what a lie this tweet is, is the fact that he brought the Miss Universe pageant to Moscow — but even that has its unsavory aspects. Nor is a putting on a beauty pageant in Moscow “nothing” to do with Russia. And, of course, Trump’s tweet cannot be squared with his own son’s statement, as reported by the Washington Post:
“Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,” Trump’s son, Donald Jr., told a real estate conference in 2008, according to an account posted on the website of eTurboNews, a trade publication. “We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”
Since yesterday’s bombshell news that an unverified election opposition research report’s source was deemed credible enough to warrant the U.S. intelligence agency heads briefing both Trump and President Obama about the claim that Russia possesses information with which to blackmail and influence Trump, even more information has started to leak out—some of it speculative, but all of it troubling. And the BBC claims a second source backs up the Trump dossier that Buzzfeed published yesterday. (Mother Jones had reported in October 2016 about the potential existence of seriously damaging potential information on Trump in the possession of Russia.)
Trump today finally at his press conference begrudgingly acknowledged that Russia was behind the hack of the DNC (later backtracking to suggest it “could be others”), but dismissed the notion that Russia has any negative information on him as fake news, attacked the press, and refused to address the issue of his own campaign’s potential collusion with the Kremlin during the election. But that came after this morning’s tweetstorm and cannot make up for or erase the tweeted lies posted above. I often think Trump’s tweets distract us from much more important issues, but at the same time his tweets cannot simply be ignored given his position, and the ongoing stupidity, vacuousness, puerility, narcissism, petulance, and brazen mendacity in those tweets should not be taken lightly, normalized, or written off as a foible or hallmark of some misbegotten notion of “authenticity.” This is particularly true, for example, given his propensity to use them to announce “policy” — such as when via tweet he cavalierly suggested a new nuclear arms race would be a good idea, and in effect double-dared North Korea to attack us with a “not going to happen!” tweet. His infantile antics are obscenely inappropriate for a head of state and risk catastrophic consequences.
And this morning’s tweet (one among a series of absurd and mordantly self-involved posts) matters, if only because it will be evidence for what I suspect will eventually be (or should be) his impeachment or his potential future trial for treason. I do not say this in jest. Several things jump out from this particular tweet, though each really just underscores what we already knew:
1. Trump cannot be trusted to ever be truthful. Every word he says or writes is suspect and devoid of credibility. There is reason that newspapers and other media outlets are now finally fact checking all his statements — because the overwhelming majority of them are false or misleading. There is no precedent for the word of the U.S. president being no good; in effect, meaningless. The man is a liar, and his spinners and enablers repeat his lies and lie for him. They are liars, too. The level of normalization is already such that we have seamlessly absorbed the fact that the news organizations feel compelled to correct the man who will be president’s statements for the public, in order to avoid serving as the mouthpiece for and spreader of his lies merely by reporting them — as happened throughout the campaign. That we tolerate these lies (and so many media organizations continue to amplify them) and he suffers no negative consequences for them is a disgrace. It’s hard to imagine a greater level of disrespect and contempt for one’s audience than the disrespect and contempt required to lie so often and so flagrantly, in the face of plain evidence demonstrating those lies. I note that his supporters do not care, and the GOP does not care. They spin, absorb, pivot, and are willing to change, bend, or break the rules for this disgusting man.
2. This lie demonstrates that Trump’s first, second, third, fourth, …and last instinct is always the same: say whatever he thinks is good, or whatever feels good, for Donald Trump in the moment. This man is not capable of putting America’s interests before his own. He never has and he never will. He cannot uphold his oath of office.
3. Trump is a national security threat as well as a global security threat. A man who lies like this, so reflexively and so brazenly, a man who would rather protect his own image over the functioning of the U.S. government cannot uphold the oath of office. He cannot and will not defend the Constitution or even our borders if the threat comes from someone he has business interests with, or who flatters him sufficiently. This is a man who has publicly sided with Russia over the sitting president of the United States when President Obama called for sanctions on Russia for its interference in our election. The man favors the dictator of a hostile foreign government whose goal is to destabilize the U.S. and the entire Western liberal democratic order over the leader of our own country. The man who will be the president of the United States supports a foreign government whose goal is to destabilize the U.S., over his own president and the U.S. intelligence community. He defends a Russian dictator from criticism and attacks his own countrymen.
A person fit for the office of the presidency would have taken the Russian election interference issue for the deadly threat that it is and would have had a press conference weeks ago reassuring the country about his commitment to the integrity of the U.S. electoral process. Such a person would have bent over backward to reassure the nation that he had no complicity in Russia’s misconduct. Such a person would have pledged to work in a bipartisan way to get to the bottom of Russian interference and to (re)build our nation’s defenses against it, both in terms of cybersecurity and disarming or minimizing the apparent Russian disinformation apparatus. A person fit for office would also have recognized that Russia’s interference is part of a broader campaign to destabilize liberal democracies, especially in Europe, and to increase its influence around the globe, and would have placed Russia’s attack on the U.S. on the continuum of Russia’s interference in the Ukraine and its ongoing interference in the upcoming elections in Germany, France, and the Netherlands. A person fit for office would see, admit, and pledge to fight against Russia’s threat to our democracy and to the stability of our allies.
A person fit for office would most certainly not publicly seek to discredit the U.S. intelligence agencies who concluded that Russia interfered in the election with the intent of electing him and destroying the chances of his Democratic opponent, or routinely decline intelligence briefings, or publicly threaten to potentially gut those agencies — even if that person privately were skeptical about aspects of the agencies’ conclusions.
A person fit for office would not attack the press for reporting on news of the intelligence agencies’ conclusions.
But as we know, Trump does not act as person fit for office would act. Because Trump is not fit for office, a fact we have known since before he declared his candidacy, and which he proved repeatedly during the campaign, in increasingly disturbing ways, and which he has underscored, daily, since the election.
And as of now, we do not know whether his attacks on the U.S. intelligence agencies and his constant praise of Putin are a function of his narcissism, or his business interests, or his ignorance, or his unearned arrogance, or the potential “kompromat,” or even collusion between his campaign and the Kremlin. On the virtual eve of his inauguration, we have no confidence that the next president of the United States will not commit, and has not committed, treason. We do not have any confidence that he would even recognize his own misconduct as misconduct. This is deeply dangerous, unsettling, and unprecedented.
4. Trump’s reaction to the leak of an unverified opposition report was unhinged, childish, ludicrous — and dangerous. As Clinton demonstrated in the three debates, he can be played like a fiddle and foreign governments will play him. That puts us all at risk.
5. Trump’s lies require investigation. Understanding the nature and extent of what he owes Russians, including Russian mobsters, and what information they may have on him, is necessary to protect U.S. interests. This need was apparent long before the kompromat dossier (whose allegations have not yet been verified), but Trump’s refusal until this morning’s press conference to even acknowledge that Russian interference in the election was undertaken to his benefit is itself deeply disturbing and suggestive of his having something to hide. We all suspect there is damning information in his tax returns, or elsewhere, because his denials of conflicts and refusals to engage in any transparency or divestiture have been so adamant. We have no way to believe or to ensure that U.S. interests will not be compromised by this man’s personal agenda, personal whims, personal needs, or personal desires. There is no precedent for this, as there should not be, and he should not be permitted to create a precedent.
The upshot is: the next U.S. president (a) cannot be trusted as a general matter and (b) cannot be trusted specifically to uphold the Constitution or to put U.S. interests ahead of his own business and personal interests. His statements that the allegations in the dossier are “fake” also cannot be relied on. He may be correct, but we have no basis on which to believe him given the evidence of his shady connections to Russia, his constant praise of Putin, and his history of lies on every topic — including, in particular, the topic of his connections to Russia.
We need a chorus, a screaming swelling chorus of outrage against this man. Demands for an independent investigation are necessary. They need to be amplified and they need to be unceasing. We need to make these demands of Congress, in newspapers, on TV, and on social media. An honest man who had the best interests of the United States at heart would not need to be pressured like this; he would already have done the right thing. He would have released his taxes; disclosed his business conflicts; turned his assets over to a blind trust; not have allowed his sons any role in his transition; not be engaging in business activities while on the transition; not be tweeting about his hotel after the election; etc. This man is incapable of behaving ethically. He will never do the right thing, as he never has, unless he has no choice. We need to give him no choice. Allowing him — the most unqualified and unfit person ever to disgrace the office of the presidency — to bend and break decades of democratic norms of governance is a straight path into allowing him to walk in the shoes of the person he seems most to admire, Vladmir Putin. It’s a straight path to corruption and to the eradication of the foundations of our republic. This lying tweet is evidence, folks. Remember it like you remember the video of Trump mocking a disabled reporter and lying about that.
Update 1/17/17 : The New York Times has an excellent story out just now:
The president-elect’s favorable comments about President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and the conclusion of United States intelligence officials that Moscow acted to help Mr. Trump’s campaign have focused attention on Mr. Trump’s business interests in Russia. Asked about the issue at his news conference last week, Mr. Trump was emphatic on one point: “I have no dealings with Russia.” And he repeated, “I have no deals that could happen in Russia because we’ve stayed away.”
The Times then goes on to document example after example of Trump’s failed efforts to gain business traction in Russia over decades. His claim to have “no deals that could happen in Russia because we’ve stayed away” is another bald-faced lie.
