Susan Wright on the Right
Not everyone who comes out of the Fox News carousel is a dyed in the wool Trump’s Temple acolyte.
Some leave the ranks horrified, in disbelief and disgust over what the network has devolved into, in this wretched age of Trump.
One such defector is Retired Lt. Col. Ralph Peters, formerly a military analyst with Fox News. He left that position in a blaze of glory several months ago, penning an op-ed saying he was not renewing his contract because the network had become a propaganda hub for the Trump administration. He said he was ashamed of his association with them.
He was 100 percent correct, so good for him.
On Wednesday night, Peters appeared on CNN and suggested there’s a reason we’re seeing all the turmoil, regarding President Trump, Russia, and the ongoing investigation.
In short: Russia’s President Putin has some kind of grip or influence over our president, and that’s not a good thing.
“When I first learned of the Steele dossier, it just rang true to me, because that’s how the Russians do things. And before he became a candidate or president, Donald Trump was the perfect target for Russian intelligence,” Peters said on CNN, referring to a dossier of salacious allegations about the president’s ties to Russia.
“Here is someone who has no self-control, a sense of sexual entitlement and intermittent financial crisis,” he continued. “I mean, that’s made-to-order for seduction by Russian intelligence.”
To be perfectly fair, the Steele dossier may have a ring of truth, but it has yet to be fully substantiated.
Some of the details have been proven (such as times and dates when Donald Trump was actually in Moscow, as well as some of the contacts he made there). Other details are more dubious (namely, the alleged “pee pee tape”).
With how much about the dossier there is that is still left outstanding, anything quoted from it has to be approached with caution.
Still, there are investigators and those with experience in dealing with our greatest geopolitical foes, Russia, who have the kind of background and training to speak on such issues.
Peters is one of those individuals, so it’s not as if he’s speaking from a place of ignorance.
He makes the point, and I agree with him, that it would be so much better to be wrong about this.
“I hope I am wrong. But when you look at Trump’s behavior patterns, his unwillingness ever to criticize Vladimir Putin, his slow-rolling sanctions, his unwillingness to create problems with Russia, even though as he attacks NATO, disrupts the relations with the E.U., how can you not draw the conclusions that Donald Trump, the president of the United States, is frightened of Vladimir Putin and his grip,” Peters said.
I suppose one could argue that Trump simply doesn’t know what he’s doing, and it would be a valid point. We can’t even put the blame on him. He didn’t put himself in office. The people who thought a chaos candidate is what this nation needed at such a crucial, delicate moment in world history – THEY bear the bulk of blame in all of this.
However, it’s Trump’s fault for staying. It’s Trump’s fault for continuing to act as Vladimir Putin’s dancing monkey, destabilizing the world around us, and allowing Russia to become more stable, stronger, and more of a leading presence on the world stage.
Whether Trump or his campaign team conspired with the Russians before the election isn’t the biggest problem.
Trump’s actions while in office are the problem. He is a weak, ignorant man in a dangerous world, and our nation will suffer for it.
Retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters: Vladimir Putin has a grip on President Trump https://t.co/e4l4s2P7oX pic.twitter.com/0qfbdELjzr
— Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) June 7, 2018
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In