When Donald Trump was asked Wednesday by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos if he’d accept intelligence and campaign help from a foreign power, he blew up Washington and gave us a sharp insight into the true Trump. This was no fifth-dimensional chess move; it was the commander in chief saying the quiet, treasonous part out loud.
Set aside that accepting such help is illegal—after all, the laws are for the little people in Trump’s Great America—it was Peak Trump.
Talking about Large Adult Son Don Jr. testifying before the Senate again about his infamous Trump Tower meeting with a Russian emissary promising dirt on Hillary Clinton (“If it’s what you say, I love it!”), Trump replied:
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“I think I’d take it.”
In Trump speak, that was, “Please send Biden oppo to Donnie@StableGenius.com asap!!” Rest assured, Don’s not calling the FBI, so bring it on!
Mr. “No Collusion” on Wednesday welcomed collusion with and aid from any and all hostile foreign powers to ensure his re-election in 2020. Trump invited all comers to fuck America, good and hard, if it means he gets the goods—again, I may point out—on his Democratic opponent.
Trump proved Wednesday exactly what we’ve known about him for quite some time—he combines treachery, stupidity, and villainy in equal measure. After his disgusting performance in the Oval Office on Wednesday, I’d call Trump a political whore for foreign powers, but that would give whores a bad name.
This is nothing new. Let’s not forget, Trump requested this kind of help in 2016. It wasn’t a joke. It wasn’t “Trump being Trump.” It was Trump on live television soliciting Russian intelligence service help in defeating Hillary. He received that help through the GRU’s subsidiary WikiLeaks within hours of his ask.
All Vladimir Putin has received in return is an American president who lets the Russian leader run wild, who sides with a former KGB officer over American intelligence services at every turn, and who displays utter obeisance to the Russian leader. Kak skazat’, “Return on investment”?
We live in a world of counterfactuals, hypotheticals, and more tu quoque scenarios than a reasonable person can process. That said, I have to beg my Republican friends to imagine—just for a moment—what you’d be doing if Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama said they would accept the help of a foreign power in a campaign and not report it to the FBI.
I’ll tell you what you’d do: You’d lose your fucking shit.
You’d spurt blood from your goddamn eyes.
You’d corner the market on guillotine, tumbrel, and pitchfork stocks. A gibbet would appear in Lafayette Park.
Fox News producers and on-air talent would grind out weeks of videos until they collapsed, as sick and exhausted as they keep saying Trump’s opponents must be. They’d work like galley slaves, a nearly naked Lou Dobbs beating a massive kettle drum to keep them producing screeching agitporn.
Entire forests would be leveled and pulped to write the condemnatory articles and books. The lights would dim on the Eastern Seaboard, and nuclear power plants would be brought online to support the massive surge of electricity needed to power a hundred thousand new servers hosting the hundred million articles and videos you’d make condemning this outrageous act.
You’d demand not only impeachment, but also drawing, quartering, and the wholesale razing of the villages of everyone involved. You’d call anyone else doing this a traitor, a villain, and the worst person ever to hold the office of president.
But we all know what’s going to happen to Trump, don’t we? It’s already happening:
Not a goddamned thing.
A few Republicans in the Senate will—ever so briefly—furrow their brows. Some will issue anodyne comments that if you squint and look really closely could be vaguely suggestive of something in the general vicinity of an elliptical criticism of Trump’s invitation to foreign governments to fuck us.
In the House, the Clown Caucus will run around with their dicks out, as per normal, and bleat about Jim Comey or Chris Steele or Bruce Ohr or Peter Strzok or whatever imaginary Deep State conspiracy they’re trying to froth into existence today. They’ll race to Fox shows like Bonfire of the Hannity to bellow about witch hunts and reap millions from the boob donors on their email lists: Help me fight the Deep State and protect President Trump from Soros-Clinton-Hussein Obama Witch Hunt Sharia Lesbianism.
Bill Barr’s Trump Family Legal Defense and Obstruction Center will do exactly fuck-all. Nothing, exactly nothing will be said or done about this outrage. A real attorney general would demand a private meeting in the Oval Office and would give President Fuckwit both barrels. A real attorney general would nut-punch a president who so obviously invites foreign intelligence services to compromise the so-called leader of the free world. Bill Barr is not a real attorney general. He is a family retainer for Trump Inc., a small man in a big job without the moral compass or legal sensibility God gave the common rat.
Trump also threw Christopher Wray under the bus Wednesday, spitting “The FBI director is wrong” for saying a person should call the FBI if a foreign government offers them information intended to sway our elections. But Wray won’t quit. Neither will Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats or CIA Director Gina Haspel. No one will.
They tell themselves a pretty lie that their replacements will be worse and that they’re the last ones standing between Trump, compromise, and chaos.
They’re wrong. Every one of them is now an enabler at best or a co-conspirator at worst. These are fearful, honorless men and women serving the most honorless man ever to besmirch the office of the president.
What is even more mind-boggling is that Trump uttered this line of utterly treasonous bile while sitting behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office.
Trump solicited foreign help while he sat behind the desk where Obama was briefed on the raid that would capture and kill Osama bin Laden. The desk where George W. Bush spoke to the nation in the hours after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.
It was the desk where George Herbert Walker Bush helped end the Cold War without firing a shot and where Reagan plotted the end of Soviet communism.
It was where JFK faced down Castro and Khrushchev as they tried to install nuclear weapons 90 miles south of Miami.
Trump’s ichor, his slimy amorality, his reek of greed and treason is an insult to the work, legacy, and memory of the men of both political parties who put America before their own egos, their own political fortunes. The sense of anger, outrage, and disgust on the part of Americans with the slightest sense of conscience is palpable and justified. That is directed not only at Trump but all those who serve and enable him, and dare call that public service.
Trump took an oath—the most sacred oath in our nation. You know it: “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
On Wednesday, Trump confirmed for the world that the oath of office is like every other oath he’s ever sworn, every wedding vow and promise he’s made, and every contract he’s ever signed. Trump views it—and us—as purely contingent, solely about his personal (and now) political benefit.
It holds up only so long as he’s getting laid or getting paid.
