July 17, 2018
Prior to assuming office, every President takes the following oath: “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of the President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Every single day, for the last 18 months, Trump has violated that oath. He has had a slapdash, self-aggrandizing approach to the job — a far cry from the faithful execution of it; privileging self-enrichment above all else. Trump has aggressively undermined laws such as the Affordable Care Act and tolerated criminal negligence in FEMA’s hurricane relief efforts in Puerto Rico. On the foreign policy front, Trump has been the essence of faithless, repeatedly destroying longstanding alliances like NATO and attacking close allies like the United Kingdom and Canada.
Trump has demonstrated abhorrent contempt for the Constitution, encouraging police officers to brutalize those they arrest, insisting on the guilt of the Central Park Five, even after they had been exonerated by DNA evidence, and most tragically, imprisoning, and seizing the children of, immigrants who lawfully seek asylum or are guilty of, at most, a misdemeanor.
If we are being honest, any one of these actions are worthy of opprobrium and should have precipitated legislative action to constrain him, or at a bare minimum, Congressional hearings. Instead, Congressional Republicans have been silently complicit in Trump’s reign of lawless cruelty and incompetence, as long as he rubber stamped their massive tax cuts and retrograde federal judges.
Yesterday’s performance in Helsinki, though, was a bridge too far. After a nearly two hour closed door meeting, Trump and Putin emerged to hold a joint press conference that was simply astonishing. Trump credulously said that he could see “no reason why” Russia would try to interfere with our elections, taking Putin’s word over that of multiple U.S. intelligence agencies. Putin admitted that he wanted Trump to win the election. Once again, Trump blamed both sides for the tense relationship with Russia, making no mention of the annexation of Crimea, incursion in the Ukraine, or the attempted murder in the United Kingdom of former Russian agents using deadly nerve gas. It was a naked declaration of allegiance to a hostile foreign power.
Condemnation was swift and universal. Commentators from Fox to MSNBC called Trump’s performance disgraceful. Former CIA Director John Brennan minced no words, stating that Trump’s performance exceeded the threshold of “high crimes and misdemeanors” and was nothing short of treasonous. Trump’s own Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, issued a statement that “we have been clear in our assessment of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and their ongoing, pervasive efforts to undermine our democracy,” (Source: Statement from DNI Coats, dni.gov, 7/16/18). Trump’s efforts to walk it back today should fool no one.
The indictments that bookended this appalling performance provide critical context. Friday’s indictment of twelve Russian military intelligence personnel leaves no doubt that the Russian election interference was a state sponsored cyber attack and suggests the involvement of as yet unnamed Americans. Yesterday’s indictment of Russian gun moll and agent, Maria Butina, is a window into the unholy alliance among the NRA, the Republican Party and Putin. What the three have in common is hostility to multicultural, representative democracies and a fetish for violence (Source: “Inside the Decade Long Russian Campaign to Infiltrate the NRA and Help Elect Donald Trump,” by Tim Dickinson, Rolling Stone, 4/2/18).
Trump’s treasonous acts cannot be viewed in a vacuum. Putin has bankrolled far right racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic movements throughout the world, and Trump and the Republicans may be his most ambitious and successful project yet. If our Constitution is going to be more than just a relic in a glass case in Philadelphia, Americans are going to have to decide what is more important to them –white supremacy or sovereignty.
#Paperballots
#Impeach45
#VOTE