While Special Counsel Robert Mueller could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt Trump himself conspired with Russians in 2016, it was Trump's staff and associates who got into trouble. Many of Trump's associates went to jail or are awaiting sentencing, or a presidential pardon, such as Mike Flynn, Roger Stone, and Paul Manafort, because of their lies about frequent contacts with Russians before and during the campaign and into his administration. It was Trump's attempt to force a new anti-corruption Ukrainian president to investigate a Russian propaganda line of "Ukraine, not Russia, hacked the DNC server in 2016 " that figured in the 2019 impeachment of Trump. In Helsinki, Trump had told Putin he trusts Russian intelligence over US intelligence regarding the 2016 interference. Mueller's report detailed 160 pages of exactly how the Russians meddled in the 2016 elections to help Trump. This month, the Director of National Intelligence, Admiral Joseph Maguire, testified to Congress they were doing it again in 2020. That intelligence chief was immediately fired by Trump and replaced by a political appointee ambassador with no intelligence experience, but he is a Trump loyalist.
None of this should have come as any surprise. At the Commander in Chief's Forum, September 7, 2016, two months before his election, Trump laid out his views about Putin, giving him an A for leadership and glossing over his Crimea actions, as well as questioning whether Russia hacked the DNC server. We were forewarned from spring 2016 through inauguration by any number of news reports that Trump supported foreign policies that dovetailed neatly with Russia's, considering recognizing as legitimate the Russian grab of the Crimea, lifting sanctions against Russia, calling NATO obsolete as a military defense alliance, demanding members pay more, and being fuzzy about whether Russia's ally Assad in Syria must go. None of those policies are or were in America's or our allies' interests since it weakens US allies’ ability to check Russian land grabs in the Baltics and Balkans and increased Russian involvement in the Middle East. Later as President, Trump refused to back NATO’s stated purpose to come to the defense when NATO member nations were attacked. So alarmed was Congress that President Trump would lift sanctions against Russia, in 2017 Congress enacted legislation to prevent the lifting of sanctions and increasing them. Trump signed the bill, but he has ignored and missed the implementation deadline.
What is very clear is that Russia wanted Trump elected, wants him re-elected per the intelligence report to Congress, and the Russians did and are doing what they can to help him. Tump is now unfettered by advice that does not support his preconceived notions and pro-Russian sentiments and he has begun purging all in intelligence services and the military who would confront him with inconvenient facts and evidence. The hoped-for military "guardrails" are gone. Every general who worked at the White House, from John Kelly, Jim Mattis, to H.R.McMaster quit or was fired. Trump is freed from any constraints of impeachment, oversight hearings and is convinced that he can do anything he wants as a sitting president. If we think the next months until January 2021 will be a hazard to the health of our national security, just imagine what a second term could bring.
The Bernie Sanders factor: in 2015-2017 Sanders supported changing the nature of NATO from a mutual defense treaty to including Russia and opposing NATO expansion. He needs to repudiate this or face the GOP's planned strategy. This dates to 2015 and 2017. I may be able to support many of Sanders' social proposals, knowing that unless Democrats also control both houses of Congress, they may never get enacted, but might get enough support to improve if not change the status quo and reverse the damage Trump has and is planning to do to health care, the environment, social security, Medicare, and Medicaid. However, Sanders is going to have to repudiate this past stance on NATO because the GOP is laying in wait to charge him as being a Russian sympathizer and a communist. Trump also will be charged as being a Russian sympathizer..and the GOP game is a false equivalency, but they will be able to paint Sanders as more dangerous in foreign policy and our national security than Trump. I see nothing in the impeachment inquiry that shows Democratic members of either house think Russia is the USA's friend. If anything, they were consistently viewing Russia as a dangerous adversary. In fact, Democrats supported the Russia hawks in the Trump administration that Trump has been and now is purging from the National Security Council, the CIA, the FBI, and the military. Sanders' comment praising Fidel Castrol only adds to the GOP case Sanders' is a commie at heart. What this does to the Cuban vote in Florida I can only imagine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzYqmIL1WtU&feature=push-sd&attr_tag=BjyPi5FkKLa-cyPH%3A6&fbclid=IwAR3V1fqUVRiLP2cPzYpP4ExYaYrYcx7DY8Sm87LtKZRIPplBNQ778fWLbH0
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/02/24/bernie-sanders-greets-his-new-front-runner-status-with-greatest-hit-praising-fidel
https://apnews.com/e10865b9478744b2acf3923985992e11
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-putin-press-conference-election-meddling-2018-7
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/1/17/1912176/-New-info-emerges-explaining-why-Tillerson-called-Trump-a-f-ing-moron
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/11/trump-generals/601348/
https://www.npr.org/2020/02/19/807191309/dark-towers-exposes-chaos-and-corruption-at-the-bank-that-holds-trump-s-secrets
https://time.com/5788479/trump-fires-maguire/
https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/07/21/trump-is-ready-to-say-youre-fired-to-nato/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yNVAx68FB0&t=144s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_policy_of_the_Donald_Trump_administration#Russia
https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-mcraven-defends-dni-joe-maguire-opinion-trump-2020-2
https://time.com/5788479/trump-fires-maguire/
https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/07/21/trump-is-ready-to-say-youre-fired-to-nato/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yNVAx68FB0&t=144s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_policy_of_the_Donald_Trump_administration#Russia
https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-mcraven-defends-dni-joe-maguire-opinion-trump-2020-2
n interference on his behalf in the 2020 elections. What a contrast with Trump and it could have been a problem for Sanders if he had not. Trump's strategy against Sanders is to paint him as a communist and pro-Russian, in order to neutralize Trump's being a tool of Putin. That is Trump's usual tactic to paint his opponent with the same black colors that others paint him. It is ye old false equivalency he uses to deflect his own weaknesses.
No comments:
Post a Comment