Trump himself is the offense. Everything that springs from him, every person who supports him, every staffer who shields him, every legislator who defends him, is an offense. Every partisan who uses him — against all he or she has ever claimed to champion — to advance a political agenda and, in so doing, places party over country, is an offense.
.. We must remind ourselves that Trump’s very presence in the White House defiles it and the institution of the presidency. Rather than rising to the honor of the office, Trump has lowered the office with his whiny, fragile, vindictive pettiness.
.. This latest episode is simply part of a body of work demonstrating the man’s utter contempt for decency.
.. [Republicans] have surrendered any moral authority to which they once laid claim — rightly or not. If Trump goes down, they all do.
.. A madman and his legislative minions are holding America hostage.
.. It is what it is and has been from day one: The most extraordinary and profound electoral mistake America has made in our lifetimes and possibly ever.
.. We must always remember that although individual Americans made the choice to vote affirmatively for him or actively withhold their support from his opponent, those decisions were influenced, in ways we cannot calculate, by Russian interference in our election, designed to privilege Trump.
.. We must remember that we now have a president exerting power to which he may only have access because a foreign power hostile to our interests wanted him installed.
.. Trump simply lied when he said that he would have won the popular vote were it not for millions of illegal votes.
.. He is banking on your becoming overwhelmed by his never-ending antics.
.. Trump is an abomination, and a cancer on the country, and none of us can rest until he is no longer holding the reins of power.
Trump’s silence on Russian hacking hands Democrats new weapon
Democrats say Trump has yet to express public concern about the underlying issue with striking implications for America’s democracy.
Democrats are uniting behind a simple message about Russian hacking during the 2016 election: Donald Trump doesn’t care.
.. The president missed a self-imposed 90-day deadline for developing a plan to “aggressively combat and stop cyberattacks,” stayed silent after Moscow-linked hackers went after the French election and publicly renewed his own skepticism about the Kremlin’s role in the digital theft of Democratic Party emails during the presidential race.
.. administration officials said the directive is aimed at broadly upgrading the government’s digital defenses, not thwarting future Russian election hacking.
.. Instead, Trump tapped a commission led by Vice President Mike Pence to investigate an issue that elections experts call vastly overblown — voter fraud
.. In the past two weeks, The Intercept published what it called a secret NSA document that described an aggressive, Moscow-backed hacking campaign to compromise state election officials, perhaps with the ultimate goal of meddling with votes.
.. Bloomberg report detailed Russian intrusions into 39 state voter databases and software systems, including one instance when hackers tried and failed to delete voter information.
.. Comey said in his widely watched testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee. “The Russians interfered in our election during the 2016 cycle. They did it with purpose. They did it with sophistication. They did it with overwhelming technical efforts. And it was an active-measures campaign driven from the top of that government.”
.. “Russia is no friend of the United States,” said Sen. Pat Toomey
.. Comey piqued Democrats when he told lawmakers the president had never once asked him about Russian hacking
.. During Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ closely watched testimony Tuesday, Manchin focused on the idea that Trump didn’t care about potential Russian interference going all the way back to the campaign.
.. House Democrats are also fighting against Republican-led efforts to close the Election Assistance Commission, the federal agency created after the Bush v. Gore recount that offers voluntary assistance to states on running elections.
Donald Trump’s Insult to History
Europe’s dismay could only have deepened when Congress seemed to cheer Mr. Trump on. Republicans, who once prided themselves as stewards of national security, have shown little concern about the way Mr. Trump treated NATO members or the links between Mr. Trump’s aides and Russia. In a statement, Senator Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, gushed over Mr. Trump’s trip to Europe and the Middle East, saying it was “executed to near perfection.”
.. These new stresses in the alliance come at a bad time.
- Europe has been battered by the Greek financial crisis;
- the rise of authoritarianism in Turkey, Hungary and Poland;
- Britain’s decision to withdraw from the European Union;
- and the flow of refugees from the Middle East and North Africa.
Mr. Putin, always eager to expand Russian influence, has exploited every weakness and crisis, along with instigating a few of his own.
- Russia invaded Ukraine and has
- interfered in electoral campaigns in the United States, France and Germany.
- Mr. Putin has meddled in the Baltic States,
- cultivated far-right-wing allies in Hungary and
- wooed President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey on NATO’s eastern flank.
- He is now courting Italy with a savvy ambassador to Rome and financing for anti-establishment parties.
There are some bright spots.
- One is that Ms. Merkel seems committed to playing a lead role as the United States pulls back; another is
- France’s election of President Emmanuel Macron, who has demonstrated a willingness to work in partnership with Ms. Merkel. The two won’t always see eye-to-eye, but
- Germany needs France and Mr. Macron is a good fit.
.. Mr. Macron gave Mr. Putin full honors but did not mince words on Russia’s destructive role in the Syrian conflict, in Ukraine and in its dissemination of fake news.
The Trump-Russia Story Starts Making Sense
Are you now thinking of the Trump dossier circulated by former British agent Christopher Steele, which also felt like a Russian plant? While the political circus in Washington has focused on purloined Democratic emails and fake news spread during the election by Russian bots, the more effective part of Moscow’s effort may have been planting fake leads to prod U.S. enforcement and intelligence agencies to intervene disruptively in the campaign.
This also should shed new light on today’s anti-Trump leakers in the intelligence agencies: They may be the real unwitting agents of Russian influence.
There are plenty of lessons to go around. Mr. Trump, if he ever really thought Vladimir Putin was his friend, probably has wised up by now.
.. Overdue is an inquiry into a possible Russian role in flogging the birther conspiracy and the 9/11 truther miasma. Mr. Trump, who loves a conspiracy theory, might consider how he and his ilk showed Russia a vulnerability in American political discourse that it could exploit.