I’m not upset, but I didn’t expect the investigation to determine otherwise.
The most plausible scenario was always that Trump had been compromised at some point - engaging in money laundering with Russian or Ukrainian mafia, having sex with prostitutes without doing an age-check in St. Petersburg, etc. Collusion was never (for me) the issue, but nor would I expect any success on the part of American counter-intelligence to reveal conclusive proof of the existence of blackmail materials (nor collusion).
From watching his activities on the world stage, it’s hard to explain how this announcement:
Doesn’t follow exactly from this meeting the prior day:
Timing-wise, there’s no other thing to explain the decision that I’m aware of.
There’s nothing to explain a universe where the President of the United States gets onto global television with the President of Russia and denounces the abilities of his own intelligence services, except being compromised.
I would hope for evidence that Trump is a traitor not because it would make me happy that he’s a traitor, but because it would allow us to deal with the issue that there have been a number of very bizarre moves which he has made that really have no explanation, even from the view of Trump’s transactionalist/deal chasing approach to politics and accepting that he’s sort of stupid and rash in his decision making, other than that he has been compromised by various sources - likely all of the way from Russia, to Israel, to Saudi Arabia, to Kim Kardashian.
Right now, the government functions relatively well and properly in defense of the national interest, on the basis that the Senate appoints most of the top positions to government. The system is designed to be robust against stupid Presidents.
But, given eight years, Trump is liable to wear them down and slowly work on advancing people like Whitaker up the ladder. He’s a lot more able to make surprise announcements like “We’re withdrawing from Syria!” and force it through, because he’s been able to get all of the Whitakers in government up into the upper-echelons. Not necessarily corrupt, but stupid enough to go along with stupid policy. Of course, there will be some corrupt ones as well.
The ability for a compromised President to work against the interests of the country grow stronger the longer an amount of time that he is in office. Minus evidence, we have to allow that to continue and hope that the Democrats won’t nominate some complete moron to compete against him. Given history, I expect Gillibrand to come up top and she’s really just seems to be young Hillary Clinton. Trump has already beaten Hillary Clinton - I’m not terribly hopeful on that front.
I hope that he’s prosecuted for crimes - whether it be treason or money laundering - not because it makes me happy to have had such a person as President, but because it saves the country. Even if we assume that he’s not compromised and that his actions in aid of Russia, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Kim Kardashian all make sense from whatever ignorant part of his mind it is that chose all of those discrete actions, well…a President too stupid to work to American advantage is just as well as calling compromised even if it’s just that he’s simply just that stupid. We still need to be saved and the political process isn’t a very reliable one for that. And where collusion and blackmail are nigh-impossible to prove, bank fraud is eminently provable. Mueller’s investigation was able to kick off investigations of further crimes, and that works for me. I don’t care whether Mueller himself follows up on those tangents or others do, so long as they’re all traced to their ends.
