The T-Word

Traitor by Chip Proser

Should I keep this time slot as a treason space? Like I said, yesterday, this story sure isn't just the regular one news cycle Trump circus. As the New York Times reported yesterday, "While the T-word has been thrown around on the fringes of the political debate about other presidents or politicians from time to time, never in the modern era has it become part of the national conversation in such a prominent way. Never in anyone’s lifetime has a president engendered such a wave of discussion about whether his real loyalty was to a foreign power over his own country. To the president’s defenders, this all sounds like a sign of what they often call Trump Derangement Syndrome. That he drives his critics to such extremes, they argue, says more about them than it does about Mr. Trump. But the president has had fewer such defenders in the last 24 hours, with prominent Republicans and even some of Mr. Trump’s traditional allies lambasting his performance and distancing themselves from him.”

Republicans are quietly distancing themselves from Trump-- covering all bases, so to speak, waiting to see what the fall out is and how they can make sure it doesn't harm their career trajectories. Democrats, who were already talking about impeaching him, are starting to talk about treason.

Yesterday the Dallas Morning News reported that Beto O'Rourke, a mild-manner young El Paso congressman who's running for the Senate seat occupied by Ted Cruz-- and in a state where Trump took 4,683,352 votes (52.4%) to Hillary's 3,868,291 (43.3%)-- that Trump’s performance in Helsinki merits impeachment. He made it clear that he's not pushing the idea, just that he'd vote for it.

“Standing on stage in another country with the leader of another country who wants to and has sought to undermine this country, and to side with him over the United States-- if I were asked to vote on this I would vote to impeach the president... Impeachment, much like an indictment, shows that there is enough there for the case to proceed and at this point there is certainly enough there for the case to proceed.

Trump's stance at the Helsinki summit on Monday left Democrats and many Republicans appalled. Presidents always hang over midterm elections but the eruption of dismay over the Russia summit took that to a new level.

O'Rourke's fresh comments in support of impeachment makes the Trump factor even more central to the Texas Senate contest.  Last October, he expressed sympathy for calls to impeach the president but said conditions weren't yet ripe, with the special counsel probe under way. In April he said that he was ready to vote for articles of impeachment but, as on Tuesday, said he wasn't going out of his way to advocate that step.

...Cruz has not responded to requests for comment on Trump's handling of the summit.

I admit to knowing next to nothing about Raúl Ilargi Meijer and I doubt he's being paid by the Kremlin. If I find out someday he was, it wouldn't shake the foundations of my world. No wikipedia page and no wikipedia page for Automatic Earth where he wrote Treason? Get A Life? yesterday wither. It makes for some interesting reading if you want to know what they're thinking from people who think the problem with Russia invading Ukraine is that "The US tried to take away Russia’s only warm water port." This guy lives in Trumpland-- deep in the heart of it. "Putin," he wrote, "is a patriot who came to the fore in mostly unexplained ways, named by American puppet Boris Yeltsin as his successor, only to save his country from US-induced plundering and restore Russia as a functioning country. Far from perfect, but functioning. Don’t forget that Russian life-expectancy fell by many years in the post-Gorbachev era. And then look now. Yes, Putin uses some hard-handed tactics from time to time. He has no choice: the US threat to Russia is an ongoing one." Yeah hard-handed tactics from time to time. As far as the T-word? "We know Mueller betrayed America when he made false claims over WMD. We have no evidence that Trump betrayed his country, we have only allegations. He may be a poor choice for president, but that’s not the same thing." So there-- two sides to every story.