Peter Baker/NY Times:
Critics of Trump Have a New Word in Their Vocabulary: Treason
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.
Julia Ioffe/GQ:
Now We All Know What Putin Has on Trump
Yes, Putin has something on Trump: He helped him win. That's the kompromat.
Facing the press after his meeting with Trump, Putin admitted—openly, arrogantly—that yes, he had wanted Trump to win in 2016. But we had known that as early as...2016. His state-run media didn't do much to hide their boss's preference: anyone but Hillary Clinton. I remember constantly explaining that summer why Putin preferred Trump to Clinton. Through the spring of 2016, Kremlin TV was clear that it wasn't that Putin wanted Trump to win, it was that he wanted Clinton to lose. The propaganda machine—and, as we now know, the covert influence machine—got behind Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, Jill Stein—anyone who wasn't Clinton.
Gabriel Sherman/Vanity Fair:
“THIS WAS THE NIGHTMARE SCENARIO”: THE WEST WING REVOLTS AFTER TRUMP EMBRACES PUTIN
As Trump grappled with his error, Chief of Staff John Kelly went into overdrive to get Trump to walk it back.
While National Security Adviser John Bolton, according to a source, thought Trump’s remarks were ill-advised, he believed that walking them back would only add fuel to the outrage pyre and make the president look weak. But Chief of Staff John Kelly was irate. According to a source, he told Trump it would make things worse for him with Robert Mueller. He also exerted pressure to try to get the president to walk back his remarks. According to three sources familiar with the situation, Kelly called around to Republicans on Capitol Hill and gave them the go-ahead to speak out against Trump. (The White House did not respond to a request for comment.) Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan held televised press conferences to assert that Russia did meddle in the election.
Thomas Rid/Politico:
What Mueller Knows About the DNC Hack—And Trump Doesn’t
The Mueller indictment of GRU officers is so detailed and comprehensive that it represents a major humiliation for what used to be one of the world’s most respected intelligence agencies. One can imagine laughter over at FSB and SVR, Russia’s other intelligence agencies, which are traditionally fierce rivals of GRU.
But in Helsinki, that laughter found a new target, as the president missed Mueller’s brilliant pass and turned it into a major American own goal. Donald Trump managed to bend what should have been an embarrassment for Russia and a firing offense for clumsy spies into an embarrassment for the United States and a punch in the gut of America’s intelligence community.
Tom Nichols/USA Today:
Had the summit ended before the two leaders took any questions, it would have been a U.S. defeat, largely because it gave Putin a chance to refute all charges against his regime and to stand — like Kim — on a stage with the putative leader of the Free World after directing multiple attacks on the U.S. and its allies.
Once the questions began, Trump's behavior was not only shameful, but bizarre and seriously worrisome. The president of the United States not only sided with the Russian president, but he did so against the American intelligence community, the American law enforcement community, and the American system of justice.
James Fallows/Atlantic:
Have They No Sense of Decency?
In the “shithole era,” the Republican U.S. senators who object to the president’s vulgarity have a choice to make.
Have you no sense of decency?” It’s the question that the members of the Republican majority in the Congress—51 senators, 239 representatives—might bear in mind, in the “shithole” era.
If only two of those senators would stand up against Donald Trump, with their votes rather than just their tweets or concerned statements, they would constitute an effective majority.
Alex Roarty/McClatchy:
‘Voting isn’t enough.’ Liberal groups band together to recruit volunteers
A coalition of liberal groups on Wednesday is launching a massive get-out-the-vote effort aimed at helping Democratic candidates during the last days of 2018 midterm election, hoping to give them a final push as the party tries to take the House majority and win a slew of competitive statewide races.
Organizers say the effort, which they are dubbing “The Last Weekend,” will attempt to recruit the largest grassroots army ever assembled before a midterm election — one that will not just vote for Democratic candidates but volunteer for their campaigns. Those who sign up would begin volunteering the Saturday before the election, a critical late juncture for the campaign.
“The stakes are so high that voting isn’t enough,” said Ethan Todras-Whitehill, executive director and co-founder of Swing Left, which is organizing the effort. “You’ve got to do more. The new bar is not just voting, but volunteering in key races that matter for determining control of the government.”
Greg Sargent/WaPo:
The truth about Trump and Russia that Republicans cannot say out loud
We all had good reason to suspect in real time that Russia was interfering, and Trump relished it, and even encouraged it, as it happened. Now that Mueller’s indictments have started fleshing out the fuller dimensions of this sabotage and its now-confirmed goal of electing Trump, this can no longer be about guarding appearances of legitimacy, because his current conduct makes that more suspect. The only conceivable explanation is that he was both perfectly happy to benefit from Russian interference and wants to obstruct/or and delegitimize the ferreting out of the truth.
Merriam-Webster:
If you take your definition of treason straight from the Constitution then it is quite narrowly defined; it involves countries with whom we are at war and efforts by both citizens of the US, and also non-citizens who owe allegiance to it, to aid these enemies. It differs from sedition ("incitement of resistance to or insurrection against lawful authority"), as this crime generally consists of advocating revolt against a government, as opposed to working in concert with an enemy to overthrow it.
Additionally, treason is frequently found used in its earliest sense, "the betrayal of a trust." And so if you ever find yourself neck-deep in an argument about whether such-and-such a politician did or did not commit the specific crime of treason you can always do the sensible thing, and quote Emily Dickinson.
The treason of an accent
Might vilify the Joy—
To breathe,—corrode the rapture
Of Sanctity to be.
— Emily Dickinson, The Treason of an Accent (from The single hound), 1915