So, let me get this straight, according to Bob Woodward’s new book War, Donald Trump was sitting in Mar-a-Lago on a trove of stolen U.S. national secrets and while there, had Vladimir Putin on speed dial for regular private chats? After he tried to overthrow our government?
And Putin is helping his campaign now by flooding our electorate with toxic disinformation? And there are people who would actually vote for this guy?
What, wait, there’s more?
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Also, according to the same book, Trump actually made a special effort to provide Putin with COVID testing kits at a point in the pandemic when many Americans couldn’t get them? Apparently Putin even warned Trump not to tell anyone he had provided the COVID-paranoid Russian dictator war-criminal with the medical care package.
All this after Trump left office? After the Russia scandals that dogged his administration? After kow-towing to Putin and publicly supporting him at the expense of the U.S. intelligence community during a July 2018 meeting in Helsinki? Some of this was after (and possibly before) Putin’s escalation of his invasion of Ukraine?
At any point in our history, such revelations about protracted canoodling with one of our most dangerous enemies would have been the political end for any American politician.
But about half of the American public--the Trumpy half--is already acclimated to the idea of electing a coup-plotting convicted felon rapist as president. This scandal is likely to be seen just as a little more colorful flair.
That zany Trump, they’ll think, that rascal. Who knows, they’ll probably write it all off to “the Russia hoax” that was actually never a hoax and, paradoxically, at the same time whisper to their friends that it just shows Trump playing three dimensional chess with the unwitting Putin to keep him in line.
For them, Putin is probably seen as Trump’s useful idiot. Certainly, it’s not Trump who is the useful idiot. After all, he’s the guy behind these great $400 gold sneakers they’re wearing and those NFTs that are going to pay for their retirement. He’s no idiot. Sure, maybe somebody’s an idiot around her, but not our Donald.
Admittedly, America’s allies may not be quite as sanguine about the ever-growing proof of Trump’s “special relationship” with the Kremlin. They were the ones who first warned of the Trump Russia ties in the first place, as you may recall. According to a recent book by former British spy Christopher Steele, some of the secrets that Trump had stashed in the bathrooms and ballrooms and who knows where else at Mar-a-Lago were “some of the most sensitive” secrets of the British navy.
While the British Ministry of Defence has denied the assertion, other Trump-related security risks, like Trump handing top secret secret intelligence provided by the Israelis to the Russian foreign minister in the Spring of 2017 has long been established.
Putin, left, and Trump at the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany July 7, 2017.
Carlos Barria/ReutersAs a consequence of that leak and other damning revelations about Trump, regardless of the apathy, passivity, or worse of some American voters, allies have long been concerned that should Trump regain the presidency there might be dire consequences to sharing vital intelligence with the United States. Should that result in them withhold such information it would directly compromise U.S. national security.
But can you blame them? Especially when the response of Team Trump to such allegations is so profoundly unserious and over-the-top that it sends the message that the entire campaign is more of a carnival freak show than it is a worthy effort to once again hand over the nuclear button, more of our secrets and control of the world’s most powerful military to Trump.
That response included referring to Woodward, one of America’s most respected and honored journalists, as “truly demented and deranged,” and as “a total sleazebag who has lost it mentally and he’s slow, lethargic, incompetent and overall a boring person with no personality.”
Talk about projection. That could have been lifted from any objective account of any recent public appearance by Trump.
As Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell tweeted following the revelations of Trump’s COVID test gift to his Moscow buddy, it’s “Hard to believe this guy is still a coin flip away from a second term.”
It is also why per a commercial released this week, “generals, secretaries of defense, secretaries of the army, navy and air force, CIA directors and national security council leaders under Democratic and Republican presidents, Republican members of congress, former Trump administration officials and even Vice President Cheney” have concluded that in this year’s election “There’s only one candidate fit to lead our nation and that’s Kamala Harris.”
In another year, such statements might be seen as Madison Avenue electioneering—although the fact that literally hundreds of such national security officials have publicly associated themselves with that conclusion and that many of them are from the opposing political party is extraordinary.
But with every passing day, there is further evidence that not only is Trump addled, declining rapidly mentally, a man of profoundly flawed character and judgment, and someone who at the moment will say anything to get elected in a desperate effort to stay out of the slammer. He also poses an actual, very serious threat to U.S. national security.
