This week, Donald Trump joined hands with Kremlin trolls to excuse Vladimir Putin for interfering in our election. The ultimate establishmentarian, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, threw his own wrong answer into the hat. Donald Trump’s GOP is willing to abet Putin tarnishing our elections, our most fundamental institution, for the sake of defeating Hillary Clinton.
This is how a political party loses its soul.
There was a presidential way to handle this. The minute those emails leaked
Trump should have used his outdoor voice to denounce Putin interfering in our elections. “Hillary may be a crook but she’s my crook. This is my election. Stay out, Vlad.” Our gormless Secretary of State even happened to be with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov Wednesday as things unfolded. Sec. Kerry did not stand up for the country but radiated weakness (shocking). Obama, Kerry and Clinton, herself, own the blame for this. The moment groaned for criticism. Yet, instead of taking a shot at the easy target, Trump defended the virulently anti-American tin pot authoritarian Putin, saying: “The new joke in town is that Russia leaked the disastrous DNC e-mails, which should never have been written (stupid), because Putin likes me.”
I have held off my criticism in the expectation (hope?) that the GOP would reverse course, criticize President Obama and Hillary Clinton for cracking the door to Putin — and tell Putin to butt out. Instead, Trump doubled down. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.” Hear any complaints from the GOP establishment about a presidential candidate inviting a foreign power to meddle in our elections? How about the self-aggrandizing foreign policy expert and recent Trump endorser, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. who once called Putin a “gangster?” Me neither.
This is not the first time a presidential candidate turned to Moscow for help unseating an opponent. In 1982 Sen. Teddy Kennedy approached Soviet Premier Yuri Andropov for help defeating Ronald Reagan. Unlike Trump, Kennedy had enough shame to keep his approach secret. Unfortunately for him, the Soviet Union ended and Western researchers found the memo.
Until this week, Kennedy owned the most shameful act of servitude in modern U.S. politics. Yet Trump, like Kennedy, put himself above the Constitution. Trump, like Kennedy, did not believe he could alone convince the American voters of his message… so he begged Moscow for help. Trump does not even know enough about the Constitution to know he has done a bad thing… but the (silent) GOP leaders do. Or at least they did.
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The GOP has now cast everything aside to beat Hillary Clinton. Everything. Don’t get me wrong; she deserves opprobrium. But my dislike of Hillary does not trump core principles, to say nothing about core defense of the Constitution. What good is it if, in our desire to cast her aside, we put forward a bozo who thinks there are 12 articles in the Constitution? True, Trump brings together traditional RINOs and crackpot conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones to fight Clinton but to what end? The GOP establishment wants all aboard the Trump train even if it means selling American democracy down the river.
Wednesday, the controversy turned to whether Trump is Putin’s plant. Give me a break. Putin is no mastermind. Trump is Putin’s useful idiot and this episode is nothing but an attempt to make hash of our elections. Because Trump is stuck in character we need someone else to speak in defense of the Constitution. The party that claims to be the protector of the Constitution should brim with people who can make this point. Apparently not today.
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Gov. Pence, if you really doubt it, you can follow the rabbit down the hole here, here, here, here, here, here. Either that, or Google it.
Trump typically thunders that Obama’s America does get respect abroad. True. Obama is weak. But how much respect does Trump think he will get as president after undermining his own Constitution for the sake of beating a candidate that nobody likes? Trump tells everyone who listens that he wants a good relationship with Putin. That sounds vaguely familiar. Presidents Bush and Obama learned the hard way that flattery gets you nowhere with Putin. Donald Trump believes himself to be awesome. He has fooled a great many people. I can assure you Vladimir Putin is not one of them.
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— Mark R. Levin (@marklevinshow) July 29, 2016
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