Donald Trump is fond of saying that the reason the United States didn’t take more drastic action against Russian interference in the 2016 election is because “They thought Hillary was going to win.” What he usually leaves off is the word “anyway.” US officials thought Hillary was likely to win anyway, despite Russian actions designed to help Trump.
Russia probably felt the same way. After all, it’s not like they followed top tier stealth procedures in their meeting with Trump, and Sessions, and Kushner, and Flynn, and Manafort, and Gates, and Cohen, and Papadopoulos, and Page, and Cambridge Analytica and … honestly, I know I’m leaving off more names than I’ve listed. The Russian government seemed completely unconcerned about showing its support for Donald Trump. For example, here’s a tweet from Valentine’s Day, 2016 in which Russian central banker Alexander Torshin—visitor to the National Prayer Breakfast, benefactor of the NRA, top lieutenant to Vladimir Putin—delivers a message that Google translate handily reports as:
Maria Butina is now in the United States. Writes to me that D. Trump (member of NRA) is really for cooperation with Russia.
But a majority of Americans do still seem to hold at least a modicum of outrage for the idea that not just Trump, but the entire Republican Party, are ready to hand over the country at fire-sale prices. In a poll conducted by The Daily Beast, 49 percent of Americans agreed that Trump’s Putin homage in Helsinki was “treasonous.” Notably that included 21 percent of Republicans. However, that follows on an Axios poll in which 79 percent of Republicans were all in favor of Trump’s attacking the United States and fawning over a Russian dictator.
Which would seem to indicate that every Republican who didn’t approve of Trump’s appearance in Helsinki thought it was treason. But that’s probably not the case. Because a growing number of Republicans seem to approve of treason, and with growing support of Putin among Republicans, there is likely some overlap between the “thought it was treason” and “approved” groups.