Is He A Legitimate President? Or Just A Temporary Anomaly Who Has To Be Carefully Dealt With & Worked Around? Or Something Worse?

It makes me sick that so many Americans-- thirty-something percent-- actually believe a word the asshole says. Saturday night it was another scare tactic/threat that "if anyone but me takes over in 2020 (I know the competition very well), there will be a Market Crash the likes of which has not been seen before!" Hours later he was fighting with the NY Times-- accusing them of treason-- for exposing how worried the military is that they can't trust the "Putin president" with secret information.

David Sanger and Nicole Perlroth, in their report, U.S. Escales Online Attacks On Russia's Power Grid wrote something that would have been unthinkable about any other president but is so obvious about Trump as to be almost an afterthought. Ostensibly, the story was that the U.S. has been "stepping up digital incursions into Russia’s electric power grid in a warning" to Putin. "In interviews over the past three months, the officials described the previously unreported deployment of American computer code inside Russia’s grid and other targets as a classified companion to more publicly discussed action directed at Moscow’s disinformation and hacking units around the 2018 midterm elections... Bolton, said the United States was now taking a broader view of potential digital targets as part of an effort 'to say to Russia, or anybody else that’s engaged in cyberoperations against us, You will pay a price.'"

The commander of United States Cyber Command, Gen. Paul M. Nakasone, has been outspoken about the need to “defend forward” deep in an adversary’s networks to demonstrate that the United States will respond to the barrage of online attacks aimed at it.

“They don’t fear us,” he told the Senate a year ago during his confirmation hearings.

But finding ways to calibrate those responses so that they deter attacks without inciting a dangerous escalation has been the source of constant debate.

Mr. Trump issued new authorities to Cyber Command last summer, in a still-classified document known as National Security Presidential Memoranda 13, giving General Nakasone far more leeway to conduct offensive online operations without receiving presidential approval.

But the action inside the Russian electric grid appears to have been conducted under little-noticed new legal authorities, slipped into the military authorization bill passed by Congress last summer. The measure approved the routine conduct of “clandestine military activity” in cyberspace, to “deter, safeguard or defend against attacks or malicious cyberactivities against the United States.”

Under the law, those actions can now be authorized by the defense secretary without special presidential approval.

“It has gotten far, far more aggressive over the past year,” one senior intelligence official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity but declining to discuss any specific classified programs. “We are doing things at a scale that we never contemplated a few years ago.”

The critical question-- impossible to know without access to the classified details of the operation-- is how deep into the Russian grid the United States has bored. Only then will it be clear whether it would be possible to plunge Russia into darkness or cripple its military-- a question that may not be answerable until the code is activated.

The shocking part of The Times' report, buried deep in the article, is that Trump is being kept in the dark about what's going on. "Two administration officials said they believed Mr. Trump had not been briefed in any detail about the steps to place 'implants'-- software code that can be used for surveillance or attack-- inside the Russian grid. Pentagon and intelligence officials described broad hesitation to go into detail with Mr. Trump about operations against Russia for concern over his reaction-- and the possibility that he might countermand it or discuss it with foreign officials, as he did in 2017 when he mentioned a sensitive operation in Syria to the Russian foreign minister."

In August, General Nakasone used the new authority granted to Cyber Command by the secret presidential directive to overwhelm the computer systems at Russia’s Internet Research Agency-- the group at the heart of the hacking during the 2016 election in the United States. It was one of four operations his so-called Russia Small Group organized around the midterm elections. Officials have talked publicly about those, though they have provided few details.

This goes right to the core of Trump's legitimacy as a president. Is he the president? Or just a temporary anomaly that has to be carefully dealt with and worked around? Or something worse? A Russian asset? Adam Kinzinger is a conservative Republican in a safe Illinois congressional seat made up of exurbs and rural areas west and south of Chicago (R+8, where Trump beat Hillary 55.5% to 38.3%). Kinzinger served in the Air Force and piloted missions in Iraq and Afghanistan and is currently a Lieutenant Colonel in the Air National Guard. He takes national security extremely seriously. On Saturday, during an interview with S.E. Cupp on CNN, he admitted that Republicans in Congress "privately" agree that Trump's comments about taking dirt from foreign governments is "unacceptable."