Would a spy for Russia be acting any differently?

  • Trump create a flap by lecturing our European allies and refusing to confirm our Article 5 obligations in public.
  • Trump attack Germany for its trade (which is entirely legitimate and benefits both countries), a practice he continued after he returned from Europe.
  • Trump give Russian officials code-word classified intelligence, thereby creating doubt among our allies as to our reliability and impairing information sharing.
  • No one in the Trump administration deny the basic outline of the blockbuster story, namely that he had not disclosed secret contacts with Russians that involved the potential for a secret channel, which Russia, but not U.S. intelligence services, could monitor.
  • Trump’s chummy interchange with Russian officials in the White House, which could not have been more different than his awkward, frosty meetings with European allies.

.. the harder it is to believe Trump isn’t, at the very least, a useful idiot.

.. But Trump has yet to take a single action nor have a single public interchange that harmed Russia’s interests. You’d think by the law of averages he’d once in a while stumble into a position that put him fundamentally at odds with Russia.