It’s now being called “the walkback.” After Donald Trump, Viceroy for Russian North America, got his first performance review from Russian President Vladimir Putin, even members of the Republican Party seemed a bit taken aback to hear Trump say, in regard to findings that Russia interfered with the 2016 election, “I have President Putin. He just said it’s not Russia. I will say this. I don’t see any reason why it would be…” So back home, Trump had a meeting with members of Congress, where he unenthusiastically read that “I have on numerous occasions noted our intelligence findings that Russians attempted to interfere in our elections.”
It didn’t go as well as Republicans wanted. Trump was clearly reading a memo that was noted in big marker, “NO COLUSION”, and then just as Trump was saying through gritted teeth that he believed the position of our intelligence agencies, the lights went out in the room. Funny that a party that is so prone to see God’s signs in everything won’t notice when a fucking anvil drops. Unfortunately, not literally.
So after a day that was so shocking that even many Republican politicians and Fox News people rediscovered their gag reflex, there was a certain amount of walkback on their part, too.
Libertarianish FOX News columnist Liz Peek, who is usually properly cynical, said, “really, did anyone really expect him to declare the Russian leader a liar on global TV? What would have been the point of traveling to Helsinki and arranging a summit between the world’s two biggest nuclear powers, only to scuttle the chance at a new and improved relationship? It wasn’t going to happen, and in fact Trump hinted at that beforehand, when he told reporters not to expect a ‘Perry Mason’ moment.” No, the “Perry Mason” moment was when the Mueller investigation indicted twelve Russian military intelligence agents for leaking DNC data in 2016, days before the “new and improved relationship” summit, thereby making Trump look like that much more of a chump.
Peek also employs the usual apologist tactic: “Democrats and never-Trumpers cannot help themselves; over the past two years, the public has grown weary of the non-stop, five-alarm fires, and they have tuned out.”
If people were tuning out, Roy Moore would be Senator from Alabama right now. I do think people are often sick of the partisan Left in this country, but they also remember from the Obama days that the Democrats weren’t the ones inflicting legal idiocy on the body politic every single day, whereas that’s all Republicans can do. Perhaps as a result, Democrats are (so far) outraising Republicans in the 2018 midterms. The Open Secrets website is currently showing Democrats raising more money than Republicans (as of July 17, $606,727,603 versus $463,948,453). Granted, part of this is that there are more Democrats running in primaries, which in itself is saying something. By contrast, a lot of Republicans – like House Speaker Paul Ryan – are retiring, and other districts are considered so uncompetitive that the only Republicans running for state and national races are actual Nazis. There definitely looks like Trump fatigue here, but it seems to be mostly on the Republican side. And that was before Trump’s “Finlandization.”
You have similar whistling in the graveyard from a couple of National Review Online pieces. Ben Shapiro, another conservative who ought to know better but seems contractually obligated to pretend otherwise, reacted to the Helsinki summit thus: “(this) doesn’t mean, as Democrats have suggested, that Trump is in bed with the Russians. Far more likely, it means that Trump’s ego is one giant gaping wound, constantly draining rage over the suggestion that his 2016 election victory was somehow ill-won … None of that acts as justification for Trump’s behavior, of course. But it does explain why when Trump says stuff, it often doesn’t matter.”
Another conservative, Michael Brendan Dougherty, wrote in NRO that while “President Donald Trump damaged his administration and harmed his own foreign-policy objectives” in Helsinki, his press conference with Putin “is further deranging America’s political life.”
Ah, yes, Trump Derangement Syndrome. Some definition is in order. Bush Derangement Syndrome was when liberals only thought the worst of George W. Bush. Obama Derangement Syndrome was when conservatives only thought the worst of Barack Obama. Trump Derangement Syndrome is when anyone believes anything that sack of shit says.
While Dougherty admits that his president displayed “bottomless credulity” in his summits with both Putin and Kim Jong-un, and that “Trump’s gifts are little more than rhetorical,” he also says that “it isn’t just the operating of the government that is deranged, but American politics at large.” Money quote: “The most obvious explanation for Trump’s behavior is not that he is enacting a 30-year-long plot against American democracy. It is that his vanity utterly forbids him to acknowledge that Russian meddling in the 2016 election contributed in any way to his victory. And it is true that if he admits it — especially if he admits it under pressure to do so — the next wave of pressure will come from those asking him to resign.”
This is the argument as to why Trump is NOT a traitor. Dougherty goes on: “On a more personal note, I am in the minority of conservative writers who agreed with President Trump that the US should be trying to achieve more peaceful relations with the world’s second-largest nuclear power. I agreed with Trump that the US has made mistakes and contributed to the deterioration of relations with Russia since the end of the Cold War. But Trump is incapable of advancing these views into wise strategy, much less reality.”
Well, I agree that there ought to have been more peaceful relations between the US and Russia. I would even agree, given the Russian majority in Crimea, that the territory should ultimately go to Russia. But that ought to be a decision made between Russia and Ukraine on a legal and diplomatic level, with the implied consent of the populations through their elected governments, and not simply an Anschluss presented to the world as a fait accompli. Saying that President Obama (and by extension Secretary Clinton) didn’t do enough to conciliate Putin, or that post-Cold War governments allowed the NATO alliance to extend to Russia’s borders, is blanking out the fact that the Baltic States and Poland pleaded to be allowed in the defensive alliance because they didn’t feel safe with Russia, given not only Russia’s past history but Putin’s numerous aggressions towards Ukraine in particular. Putin is the aggressor and the initiator of tensions. That would be the issue whether Trump were a compromised asset or simply “incapable of advancing” even pro-Russia views into wise strategy, let alone reality.
Certainly we cannot just throw “treason” and “traitor” around just cause some people don’t like the results of the last election. You can’t just do stuff like, shout “you lie!” at the president during the State of the Union address. You can’t just grind the entire process of government to a halt on the implication that the president is inherently illegitimate. Although from 2009 to 2016, the Republicans did as well at that as anybody could. But if Dougherty thinks that that means we should still trust the nuclear codes to the guy who stares at the can of orange juice for three minutes cause it says “CONCENTRATE”, he elides the point that this is hardly the first time that Trump has gone against reality and evidence, that as a result, he has no credibility left outside his own party, and even in their own ranks, people are openly balking.
Consider also that Trump is thought by many to agree with (or at least go along with) the last person who talked to him. In Helsinki, he wasn’t going to disagree with Putin when he was standing right by his side. Now consider that back at home on Tuesday, he wasn’t going to disagree with his staff and stick up for the things he said on Putin’s behalf. In both cases we see a fundamental weakness of will. And if “conservatives” gravitate to Trump because he’s a leader, they really ought to think of who’s leading him at the moment.
Perhaps what we just saw in Helsinki does not reach the technical definition of treason. Perhaps Republicans still think they can get enough out of this president that they need to hold on to him. But it’s telling that the strongest arguments that Republican partisans can offer in defense of the Leader are that he is too vain to admit Russian election interference, too attention-deficit to be a good spy, and in any case it doesn’t matter because the EU and Russia know not to take Trump very seriously.
One doesn’t need to assume that Trump is the Antichrist. Incidentally, he’s not. Lucifer actually IS a man of wealth and taste. But if you were not already inclined to assume the worst of him – indeed, if you actually ARE more objective than the rest of us – you would have to wonder why Trump acts subordinate to Putin if he isn’t. You have to wonder why he has something to hide if he doesn’t. You have to ask why he acts like Putin has something on him if he doesn’t. And you have to go back in time and ask what you, or the “liberal” press would say if Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton were acting like this. And if you’re planning to vote Republican this year… you really need to ask yourself which side that party is on.