Monday, December 12, 2016

Maybe Trump Isn't My President

I admit I was a little annoyed by some people who kept at the mantra "Trump is not my president" just after the election.   

This was coming from people I normally agree with on politics. But Trump won, despite the obvious flaws with the Electoral College, and the flaws in the media, the candidates, some voters and a multitude of other factors.

So, we had to come together as a nation, and those of us who can't stand Trump would be the loyal opposition, holding his feet to the fire through his administration.

After the revelations over the past few days, and Trumps reaction to them, maybe the "Trump is not my president" crowd was right.

Of course I'm referring to the additional news that's been coming out about Russian meddling in our election.

As the Washington Post told us late last week, people with connections to the Russian government and Wikileaks used thousands of hacked Democratic National Committee emails to boost Trump's chances.

"'It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia's goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected,' a senior U.S. official briefed on an intelligence presentation made to U.S. Senators told the Washington Post on Friday. 'That's the consensus view.'"

That report is a bombshell, even if we don't have firm evidence the Trump campaign directly coordinated with Russia during the election campaign.

The more disturbing part of the news was Trump's reaction to it.

According to the Washington Post:

 "'I think it's ridiculous,' Trump said in an interview with 'Fox News Sunday,' his first Sunday show appearance since the election last month. 'I think it's just another excuse. I don't believe it.....No I don't believe it all.'"

Trump also said that the CIA was wrong about Iraq weapons of mass destruction during the Bush adminstration. In his mind, if the intelligence officials were wrong once, they're always wrong.

Think about this: He's siding with Russia over us. Yes, assess and judge CIA reports as president-elect, but to just dismiss it out of hand and cozy up to his pal Vladimir Putin in the process?

Ugh.

Trump is apparently too full of himself to get legit intelligence briefings anyway. He said: "I get it whe I need it....I'm like, a smart person. I don't have to be told the same thing in the same words every single day for the next eight years."

Ookey Dokey!

Then you add in all the other factors that seem to delegitimize Trump. He won the electoral college, but lost the popular vote by more than 2.5 million people. Not exactly a mandate.

His fascination with Russia seems to keep going on and on like the Energizer Bunny, too. I'm not sure if he's actually going to pick ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State, like news reports suggest.

If he does, though, Tillerson has lots of close ties to Russia, which isn't such a great thing for a Secretary of State, is it?

The Trump and Russia conundrum is making strange bedfellows, that's for sure. South Carolina Sen. Lindsay Graham, a Republican, usually drives me crazy with what he says. But he's right when he called for a Congressional investigation into the matter.

A real pleasant surprise was Joe Walsh, the former Congressman from Illinois, a reactionary right winger whose ever word he ever uttered I disagreed with.

Until now.

Walsh went on an epic tweetstorm over the weekend, outraged that most fellow Republicans are not itching for an investigation.

Sample Walsh tweets:

"I'm a Trump supporter. But if Russia messed with our election to help Hilary lose, I'd be pissed and I'd demand something be done about it."

And:

"Republican silence will be tantamount to treason. Call 4 an investigation. Foreign governments can't pick our President #RussianHackers."

The fact that Trump continues to attack any hint of anybody calling for an investigation is suspicious to me, big time.

I don't know if there's anything there, but he's acting like a five year old trying to lie his way out his parents learning he had his hands in the cookie jar.

Except the five year old's lies are more nuanced and clever than Trump's.

God help us all. I really don't think Trump's our president. Maybe he's Russia's, and he is turning the United States into a wholly owned subsidiary of Russia.

Ugh.

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