Let’s get this straight: without Russia MAKING him president, Donald J Trump would not BE president.
We felt it collectively on Election Night 2016 as the results went toward the unexpected. It felt strange — not just because it wasn’t going the way we expected. No, it felt strange on a whole other subcutaneous level, down in our guts where our animal selves live. Our animal sense got it immediately. This stinks.
Trump winning the election felt like a lie. I still cringe on hearing the word “President” when attached to Trump’s name. It doesn’t compute or add up. I wouldn’t want him as the president of my condo association never mind of the United States.
Trump’s “win” (quotation marking it feels totally honest) felt like a lie. Like the Truth had been compromised somehow. Marginalized. That would make sense — that Trump would come for the Truth first. Truth will always be Trump’s enemy. That and human decency.
Chapter One in Authoritarianism For Dummies makes it abundantly clear: Destroy the Truth first!
From the moment even his campaign started, Trump — like a good prodigal authoritarian — went after the Truth. If he lost, he insisted, the election was rigged. The trick wasn’t so much denying the Truth as getting the rest of us to buy into his version — and damned if the American Main Stream Media didn’t oblige. How long did it take to normalize “Mexicans are rapists?”
“Grab em by the pussy” normalized even further. To be fair, it grabbed pussies had to compete with “but her emails”. You can see how that’d be challenging…
Though he sucks at everything else, Trump excels at destroying things from the inside out. He’s like a virus, always trying to turn everything else into him. That includes America.
The Mueller Report did not deal with the totality of Russia’s interference in or impact on Election 2016. They didn’t deal with the totality of Trump’s multi-faceted criminality. They didn’t deal with all the other ways (aside from Wikileaks) that Russian actors & Trump actors played nicely together for the purpose of destroying American Democracy. It was never in their purview (as much as some of us hoped it would be).
The Mueller Report came back “smaller” than we expected in part because Team Mueller’s investigation was continually compromised and obstructed by everyone on Team Trump — even the ones Team Mueller thought were cooperating. This is no ordinary group of criminals up to no good.
These are traitors and seditionists. These are confederates and anti-American greedists who cannot abide that they are already a minority party representing a minority (shrinking minority) point of view.
Want to know why Mitch McConnell won’t protect our election infrastructure? It’s because he knows for a fact that without Russia literally STEALING election 2016 on Trump’s and the GOP’s benefit, Hillary Clinton would be president now. We shouldn’t be naive. A Clinton presidency would have been under constant siege from every one of these nefarious asshats — at Russia’s urging and behest.
But we wouldn’t be facing a moment of very real peril.
We’re getting the story now in dribs and drabs. Donald Trump has been a work in progress for Putin going back years. So has the Republican Party. Election 2016. Brexit was a dry run for Election 2016. Election 2016 succeeded beyond Vladimir Putin’s wildest dreams — not only did he put his own guy in the White House, he set in motion the means to keep us under his thumb forever via permanent (Republican) minority rule.
The Projector In Chief TOLD us this was so almost as soon as he “won”: He knew questions about his legitimacy were themselves legitimate. That scared the crap out of him — which he projected like the manic sociopath huffed up on powdered Adderall that he is.
I dare anyone to look at a SINGLE thing Trump’s done since “winning” that hasn’t looked like, felt like or sounded like he wasn’t compromised in every way imaginable.
Better yet, let a thousand words do the talking…
I’ll repeat: without Russia’s direct help, influence, money & ACTIVE MEASURES, Donald Trump doesn’t win the presidency of the United States. Hell, he doesn’t even get his corrupt, bloated orange ass through the primaries — which is followed by the Republicans coming up empty.
Donald Trump won nothing in 2016. It’s questionable if the GOP won much of what they claim they won. If a single dollar of money flowed from Russia into a single Republican campaign coffer (lots more than a single dollar flowed), every victory by every Republican has to be re-examined in the light of conspiracy to defraud the American electorate and commit Treason.