STUCK AROUND ST. PETERSBURG WHEN I SAW IT WAS TIME FOR A CHANGE
A commenter on my “Anastasia Screamed In Vain” Facebook post earlier today suggested that Trump’s Russian contacts were defensible because heads of state naturally talk to their foreign counterparts; and that the whole controversy over Russia has been manufactured by Trump’s political opponents in an attempt to frame him for something he didn’t do.
The first argument doesn’t hold up, since Trump wasn’t a head of state when these contacts – some as early as last summer – occurred. The United States has one president at a time, and Trump’s turn didn’t come until January 20. This isn’t just a quaint custom; it’s a law – the Logan Act.
The assertion that Trump is being framed is déjà vu all over again. When you’ve been around as long as I have, you’ve seen a bunch of political scandals play out, and you begin to recognize patterns. Politically motivated hit jobs, like Benghazi, are pretty obvious early on. Either they uncover no new information, or the new information that does come to light weakens the scandal narrative rather than strengthening it. The inquisitors keep investigating and not finding evidence of wrongdoing.
That’s not what’s happening with Russiaghazigate.
At a this stage of the Watergate scandal, Richard Nixon’s supporters were pushing every argument they could think of, including the one that he was being framed by the very Democrats he’d just defeated in the presidential election, in a desperate attempt to block the investigations.
That argument didn’t work then, and it won’t work now, because it failed to address one simple question: if they’re innocent, why are they acting guilty?
Until there’s a persuasive answer to that question, reasonable people have a right to be suspicious.
Ironically, there’s an easy way for Trump and his supporters to refute these accusations. Instead of trying to head off an independent investigation, Trump supporters who sincerely believe that Trump is being framed should say, “bring it on.” They should say to the Republicans who control Congress, “We have total faith in Donald Trump’s innocence, and we demand that Congress empower an unrestricted independent investigation to determine the truth of the matter.”
Why don’t Trump supporters do that?
My guess is that most of them don’t really believe that Trump is innocent. Instead, they believe that he’s guilty, and they don’t care. They want Donald Trump to be above the law.
Donald Trump ran an intentionally polarizing campaign. He has deliberately cultivated enemies rather than allies. He appeals to his supporters through anger and fear. In the process, he has empowered a lot of bad hombres, including literal Nazis and Klansmen, who support him not in spite of his faults, but because of them. They revel in his attempts to humiliate minorities, and some of them are taking matters into their own hands. After all, if Trump is above the law, why aren’t they?
Want an example? When Trump left Jews out of his Holocaust Memorial declaration, the bad hombres noticed. Voila, an explosion of anti-Semitic threats and actions across the country. Want another? Note the enthusiasm with which Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have exceeded their authority in targeting the most vulnerable victims of Trump’s ban. They haven’t caught any terrorists yet, but they’ve made life miserable for a whole lot of sick people and children.
The words of a couple of Old Testament prophets come to mind. Micah 6:8: “What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” That doesn’t sound like Trump or his fans to me. Hosea 8:7 comes closer: “For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.”