Any reasonable person watching the press conference held yesterday by presidents
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Helsinki after what can only loosely be
referred to as a “summit meeting” has to have come to one of three conclusions:
that the US president is an intellectual midget incapable of understanding the
simplest of concepts (such as who is “friend” and who is “foe”), that he is
certifiably insane (a psychopath, for instance, is defined as having “a
personality disorder characterized by persistent antisocial behavior, impaired
empathy and remorse, and bold, disinhibited, and egotistical traits”...um, if
the shoe fits), or that he is a traitor to his country.
Following the disgraceful display of capitulation demonstrated by Trump
before a gloating Vladimir Putin, former CIA Director John Brennan was quick to
tweet "Donald Trump's press conference performance in Helsinki rises to and
exceeds the threshold of 'high crimes and misdemeanors. It was nothing short of
treasonous."
“High crimes and misdemeanors” is, of course, the constitutional
definition of grounds for impeachment. Treason, as Director Brennan pointed
out, is something else. As demonstrated by all of the pundits who were outraged
by Trump’s performance but who balked a little at Brennan’s characterization of
it as treason.
The word seems to scare a lot of people. But let’s look at it from Brennan’s
clearly ethical and patriotic viewpoint. The simple dictionary definition of
treason is “the crime of betraying one’s country.” In other words, putting one’s
own interests or, worse still, the interests of a third party or country above
those of one’s nation. That might not matter a great deal, in a peacetime
situation at least, if you’re just John Doe. But if you’re Donald John Trump,
and the president of the United States, it’s a very big deal indeed.
The US Constitution has its own definition of treason: “ "Treason
against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or
in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort..."
So where does that leave Trump? Andrew Wright, former assistant White
House counsel and associate professor at the Savannah Law School, was quoted
yesterday as saying that since the US and Russia are not at war, he didn't
believe that Trump's conduct at the summit alone amounted to treason.
"It's quite clear he's selling out important American
national-security interests by not standing up to Russian aggression,"
Wright told the on-line publication Business
Insider. "That's why you see some people using the term 'traitor.'
It's not a term I prefer to use ... It's the kind of thing I'd like to see
after more investigative processes and legal findings."
But Jens David Ohlin, a vice dean and professor of law at Cornell Law
School, countered that, even without a formal declaration, there is a case to
be made that Russia and the US are indeed at war.
"One argument would be that Russia has engaged in a covert cyber
intervention against US interests, including election meddling, that rises to
the level of hostilities," he said.
"However, an even better argument would be that Russia and the
United States are on the opposite sides of various armed confrontations in
Syria." He was referring, of course, to Russia's backing of the regime of
dictator Bashar al-Assad while the US is providing a certain amount of support
to rebel groups seeking to overthrow that regime, a situation that has brought
US-coalition and Russian air support into dangerously close contact on more
than one occasion.
No matter whether Russia and the US can be considered to be engaged in
hostilities against one another, Putin’s Russia must at least be considered a
hostile power, in terms of the strategic interests of the United States—whose
democracy and system of government, mounting evidence shows, it has been actively
seeking to undermine—and to the interests of its closest allies in Europe,
where Putin is seen as a clear and present danger. And so the second part of
the constitutional definition (offering aid and comfort to America’s enemies)
would appear to fit.
The fact that Trump refused to even have his closest aides in the room
with him and Putin when they met (and this was the US president’s stipulation,
not Putin’s, although Putin must have been overjoyed by the suggestion) is
telling. And it speaks to the body language of the two men when they later
emerged to face the press, with Trump looking and sounding as if he had just
been bitch-slapped and Putin smirking and posturing like the bouncer at a
high-end disco.
And there can be no doubt that every thinking human being in the United
States and in the NATO nations must have been utterly astonished, when Trump cavalierly
dismissed the findings of ongoing probes and the indictment of a dozen military
intelligence agents of Russia for explicit and reiterated intervention in the
US election process and said that he believed Putin’s “strong and powerful
denial” that he was involved.
Okay, we know Putin wasn’t sitting in bed at night with his laptop
hacking the elections, but if Russian state intelligence was involved, Putin
was giving the orders. This was like his repeated denials that Russia was
involved in the fighting in Ukraine—following, it should be added, Russian
annexation of Crimea. Those involved in the bloody fighting in ethnic Russian
areas of Ukraine were, he insisted, volunteer guerrilla fighters. But they were
wearing Russian uniforms without insignias and were armed to the teeth with
Russian hardware. And official Russian troops and tanks were assembled all along
the border with Ukraine. Obviously, Putin wasn’t there leading the charge with
ivory-handled pistols in the style of George Patton, but let’s not kid
ourselves: His finger was on the trigger.
Stunned Americans are today asking, why. Why would a US president deny
his nation’s own intelligence (more than a dozen intelligence agencies that say
Russia is involved in cyber-warfare against the US)? Why would he show such utter
and humiliating weakness toward the autocratic leader of an anti-democratic and
anti-American expansionist regime? Why would he refuse to even bring up the
subject of the twelve indictments against Russian cyber-spies, let alone demand
their extradition? And why would he preface the summit with this nefarious
autocrat by doing Putin’s work for him and trashing America’s closest allies,
sowing discord in NATO and destroying international confidence in the US as the
leader of the free world?
But those are the wrong questions. The question should be, how long will
the American people put up with a president who is capable of doing these
things? It is no longer a matter of whether Donald Trump is serving his own
interests above those of the country he is constitutionally bound to serve. It
doesn’t matter whether the Russians have something personal on Trump that, if
revealed, would spell personal disaster for him, or that he simply can’t admit
the role of Russian espionage in helping him win the election in 2016 and that
if he is going to be able to justify as legitimate his controversial win over
Hillary Clinton, he must place his own narcissism above the interests of the country—and
if that’s the case...see item three in the first paragraph of this essay. What
matters is that the president has proven himself unequivocally incompetent to
serve in the high office that was bestowed on him.
Yesterday, we witnessed the president of the United States—an office
usually held by individuals thought of as leaders of the free world—grovel
before one of the world’s most ruthless autocrats, an authoritarian who has
been in power for nearly two decades, and who, since 2014, has made no secret
of leading his country on the path to a new age of expansionism, in pursuit of
a return to the power and glory of the now defunct Soviet Union.
Trump has made it clear that he values his relationship with Putin above
his responsibilities as president of the United States.
That should be a clear enough response to any questions in anyone’s mind
about what happened this week.
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