Our democracy is in serious danger.
President Trump is either totally compromised by the Russians or is a towering fool, or both, but either way he has shown himself unwilling or unable to defend America against a Russian campaign to divide and undermine our democracy.
Those words appear in today’s New York Times in a column with the title Whatever Trump Is Hiding Is Hurting All of Us Now.
It was written by a man whose words I rarely reference, despite his three Pulitzer Prizes for Commentary, Thomas Friedman.
But trust me when I say this column is deserving of your attention, as I think what I have l already quoted should clearly demonstrate.
Here is another paragraph from relatively early in this column:
In sum, Trump is either hiding something so threatening to himself, or he’s criminally incompetent to be commander in chief. It is impossible yet to say which explanation for his behavior is true, but it seems highly likely that one of these scenarios explains Trump’s refusal to respond to Russia’s direct attack on our system — a quiescence that is simply unprecedented for any U.S. president in history. Russia is not our friend. It has acted in a hostile manner. And Trump keeps ignoring it all.
Think of the choice between those two possibilities.
Many people have commented — and more — on how Trump has acted since the announcement on Friday of the indictments of Russians. Clearly his tweet storm for that and for the Valentine’s Day shooting have infuriated not only the student at Marjory Stoneham Douglas High School, but most thoughtful people around the country, including many very conservative commentators.
And rightly so. Friedman is not alone in taking apart what Trump has done in the past few days.
But Friedman really works at putting all this in context before offering his commentary with words like these:
It is so obvious what Trump is up to: Again, he is either a total sucker for Putin or, more likely, he is hiding something that he knows the Russians have on him, and he knows that the longer Mueller’s investigation goes on, the more likely he will be to find and expose it.
Friedman’s own guess is that this is about the money Trump has gotten from Russia. He quotes the famous statement about Russian money from Don Jr before writing
But whatever it is, Trump is either trying so hard to hide it or is so naïve about Russia that he is ready to not only resist mounting a proper defense of our democracy, he’s actually ready to undermine some of our most important institutions, the F.B.I. and Justice Department, to keep his compromised status hidden.
And yet this is all preface for the brief and powerful conclusion with which Friedman ends this column:
That must not be tolerated. This is code red. The biggest threat to the integrity of our democracy today is in the Oval Office.
Whether or not you have ever been a Friedman fan — and to be clear, I have never been one — that last paragraph is absolutely on target.
The burden is now on all of us, not just the Congress, but all of us, lest for failure to act that threat destroy what is left of the integrity of our democracy.
THIS IS CODE RED!!!!!!!