I cannot believe that on Meet The Press today, as just one example, I watched the head of the RNC express deep skepticism about the intelligence reports that confirm the Russian hijacking of the election. According to Trump and his conscience-less flacks, not only didn’t the Russians hack the RNC and DNC servers, then suppress the RNC materials, and only feed WikiLeaks the Democratic emails (whose daily drip helped Trump win) — but there’s no reason to think the Russians hacked anyone! At worst they MAY have, just as Trump’s imaginary, super-sized hacker friend in New Jersey may have. The DNC servers being so porous that anyone — you, me, a 9-year-old with an hour to kill — can hack them.
What’s most galling is the way pretty much all media outlets continue to add “objective” lines like "Of course in no way is anyone suggesting that this affected or delegitimized the outcome of the election." Of course! To which I respond — with no offense intended (it’s a real question) — "Are you suffering from dementia? Or greed? Or malice? Or just raw cowardice?"
Everyone in Washington seems quite prepared to move forward — business as usual — with a presidential transition, despite the growing weight of evidence that Russia (and our own FBI) forced a Trump victory — and despite the Clinton popular victory margin nearing 3 million votes (2.1%). Let’s just play our fiddles, as Trump burns our democratic institutions and rules of engagement — and the democracy they're supposed to protect.
Remember the difference between the “spirit” and “letter” of the law? Remember how, pre-Trump, our country functioned via a judicious balance between the two? Remember when “1984”’s “newspeak” and “doublethink” were just metaphors? No more; apparently Orwell’s timeline missed by 30 years but his dystopian prophecy was otherwise accurate. And our “leaders” seem to be fine with it; maybe a tad upset, but not enough to take action.
Well, extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures, and if ever this country has had an extraordinary time this is it. Folks — our democracy HAS been hacked, and we seem to be just fine with that. Any investigations that might have real teeth are being relegated to some distant time post-inauguration. By then, it will be way too late to prevent the permanent havoc that Trump is preparing to wreak starting Day One.
And “we have no choice”! We must protect protocols and fears and customs that Trump openly mocks, and let this walking, talking professor of corruption slither right into the Presidency even as he openly, flagrantly, defiantly, belligerently attacks the intelligence community with no earthly basis for dissent (he does have an unearthly basis: the conclusions threaten him). And so his bizarre collection of minions circle the wagons, and Trump himself — rather than call for a full investigation, and suggest that he not be sworn in until the full impact of the Russian role has been understood -- denounces his own intelligence community as...partisan. Quite possibly correct, since Comey and the FBI helped get him elected, suggesting that any partisanship tilts toward Trump.
But the Big Lie triumphs yet again.
Circumstantially (so far), if we follow the money (thank you Deep Throat), Trump certainly appears to be bought and sold by Putin. His Exxon Mobil CEO and Secretary of State-designate signed a deal with Putin in 2011 worth up to $500 billion to Big Oil and Big Vladimir -- for which Mr. Tillerson was awarded a special "friendship" award by his Russian pal — the lovable Vlad, a.k.a Hostile Dictator / former KGB Chief.
And so the result of our elected officials’ cowardice and dereliction of duty, is that our country is about to choke on its own vomit (forgive me) because no Congressional coalition has the courage to declare this a genuine Constitutional crisis. The most popular alibi: delegitimizing the election would play into Putin's hands and cause havoc at home. Except -- the Russians ALREADY delegitimized the election and have ALREADY caused havoc at home. That horse left the barn a month ago. How do individual opinions -- “well...we’re not 100% sure the Russians are responsible” — measure up (in terms of legitimacy) against our intelligence community’s assertion of “high confidence” that they ARE? And if they are, a man whose historically unpopular, minority election was engineered in part by a hostile foreign government, is obviously now deeply in their debt — a debt that (so far only circumstantially, but let’s see what emerges next), will likely turn out to be both political and financial.
We’re staring — paralyzed — at the increasing likelihood of sedition and treason at the very top of the American food chain. I dearly wish this were one of those high-concept movies starring Harrison Ford, but it isn’t. It’s a chess game we cannot lose (and by “we” I mean ALL of America).
Please repeat this to yourself: according to roughly 17 separate intelligence agencies, a hostile foreign government directly influenced our election — as did the director of our FBI. In addition, there's evidence of seditious collusion between Putin and the Trump campaign (his former campaign chief made millions from the Russians, Trump repeatedly and enthusiastically extolled Putin's virtues, and Trump has now appointed the Exxon fox to occupy our biggest chicken coop — this man who's made billions from deals with Putin while leading a company increasingly under fire for suppressing and lying about the research with which its own scientists proved the reality of climate change and the leading role played by its core business: fossil fuel).
But Trump Tweets a 140-character rejection of the opinions of 17 intelligence agencies. Just because. And our “leaders” shrug: Oh. Ok.
Why will no Congressional coalition simply stand up and declare the election results tainted? Instead they assert that the voting machines themselves seem not to have been tampered with. Wonderful. The VOTERS were tampered with, PUBLIC OPINION was grossly and flagrantly manipulated — and not just by Russia but by our own FBI. But not the machines themselves.
I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but does it not seem clear that we’re seeing the unfolding of some kind of silent coup? How else explain it? Yet the self-protecting fools we’ve elected to protect our government’s integrity cower instead of standing up and declaring themselves.
All I can say to both Houses and both parties in Congress, is that history is watching you. You’re not "protecting the integrity of the presidency" — you’re enabling the destruction of the integrity of the presidency; watching passively as our democracy’s protections are so clearly manipulated to engineer its self-destruction.
President Obama: We call on you to fulfill the promise of your Presidency by honoring your central obligation: to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
You know better than anyone that this is not a drill.
P.S. — from a NY Times editorial, just published: “Revelations about Russian involvement will loom over many of Mr. Trump’s decisions, including his likely choice
to lead the State Department, Rex Tillerson. Mr. Tillerson, the chief executive of Exxon Mobil, has cultivated a close and profitable relationship with Mr. Putin and criticized American sanctions against Russia.
Mr. Trump should be leading the call for a thorough investigation, since it would be the only way to remove this darkening cloud from his presidency. Failing to resolve the questions about Russia would feed suspicion among millions of Americans that a dominant theme of his candidacy turned out to be true: The election was indeed rigged.”