Personally, I just want the whole thing to go away.
Does Trump’s refusal to condemn Russian meddling in yesterday’s press conference mean that he is secretly a Russian agent, doing their bidding? Some big-name twitter accounts have been suggesting this, with theories even suggesting that he was recruited decades ago by the KGB playing a very, very long game.
Is he a stooge, who has been suckered into Putin’s orbit by flattery, and his inability to see Russia’s actions as anything other than “all governments are corrupt and power-hungry in their own way”?
If so, what’s Russia’s/Trump’s agenda? Will he, in fact, refuse to harden US cyber-defenses against Russian (or other) hackers, so that vote totals in future elections are meddled-with? Will he refuse to defend the Baltic countries, or defend them in a Sitzkrieg sort of way, if they are attacked by Russia? (And, if so, will Europe likewise sit on their hands?)
Is he simply, as a knee-jerk response, defending Russia publicly because he hears accusations of Russian meddling as accusations that he is not the true president, but without any consequence in terms of actual US policy, which is not visibly pro-Russian — sanctions are still in place, we’re still willing to attack Russians in Syria, etc.?
I see a lot of calls on Twitter from Democrats for Republicans to “do something” but I’m not sure what can be done. Is it treason to say nice words to a world leader? We are not, in fact, at war with Russia. Trump has not engaged in actions that demonstrate that he clearly and unambiguously is advancing another country’s interests to the harm of our own. And I’m not seeing anything that suggests that impeachment is a realistic option — this isn’t like a recall election at the state or local level where all you need are enough voters unhappy with the state of affairs.
And this is where one’s thoughts turn to 2020. Granted, it’s two years away, but from all appearances, the Democrats will be nominating someone who has signed off on a Bernie Sanders agenda: “we want to become what we imagine Sweden to be” — with massive increases in government social welfare spending (free college, free medical treatment, free daycare, free parental leave, free expanded Social Security — am I forgetting any of the “frees”?) paid for with taxes on the “millionaires and billionaires” or, in the new line of thinking, simply by deficit spending and money-printing, the so-called MMT (see this twitter thread by Jeffrey Brown) which claims that government spenders will be able to successfully generously spend money while skillfully avoiding inflation because smarts. (Never mind that in Sweden, all of the “frees” are paid for with high taxes for everyone.) And unfortunately I suspect this will likely kill any likelihood of an independent or third-party challenge to Trump, since the stakes would be too high for Republicans, in a way that they wouldn’t be if an acceptable, moderate, out-reaching Democrat came to the fore.
Which means that I’m inclined to think that the only way forward is this: the conventional wisdom on Trump is that he’s very susceptible, too susceptible, to flattery, but digs his heels in when he is criticized. So the only solution I really see is to hire some top-notch professional flatterers, to tell Trump, “you’re the best president, the very best, everyone who criticizes you is jealous, and by the way, all of the best presidents choose not to run for a second term because they’re so great.”
Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ADonald_Trump_(8567813820)_(2).jpg; By Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America (Donald Trump) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
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