Sure… but you must understand that if you’re making a legal claim, then the written law must apply. If your claim is merely that, in your mind, by your understanding of what U.S. interests should be, the President’s actions are detrimental to those interests and therefore traitorous, I certainly won’t argue. You have every right to hold that opinion.
But not to make the leap that because you hold that opinion, the conduct is therefore objectively, legally treasonous.
Define “objectively”.
We are currently in the somewhat peculiar situation where, in my ever-so-humble opinion, a substantial portion of our country’s leadership do not have the country’s interests at heart. Or to put it another, completely calm, way: the entire lot of them are traitors.
The rebuttal to this of course is that the leadership of our country decides what traitorous behavior is. If the president decides that spontaneously enslaving the entire populace and handing them over to russia to work in the well-known russian salt mines is good for the country, then it must be so!
My rebuttal to that is that we don’t live in a dictatorship, we live in a democracy. The government reigns with power lent to it by the people.
The rebuttal to that is that we’re not a democra(t)cy, we’re a republic(an), and so when we elect people they’re in charge and that’s it and the salt mines look great this time of year.
My rebuttal to that is that we’re still a democracy, but it’s chained down a bit. There’s a lag, and we don’t force every able voter to vote in an educated and informed way, so you can end up in situations where the bulk of people with any awareness of the situation at all think that Trump is a Putin stooge but Congress is still signing a go-ahead order for the salt mines. Which means, in my opinion, if the populace decides that Trump is a traitor, by gum he is one. We have a say too.
Now you could tell me I don’t have proper poll information about whether the bulk of the populace thinks Trump is a Putin stooge. That’s nice.
You could also tell me that the populace has no legal recourse for doing anything about the fact Trump is a traitor. That’s less nice, but it’s also true - we handed power over to an opportunistic dipshit who’s propped up by a horde of opportunistic liars, and there’s no getting that power back. Regardless of whether he’s a traitor or not there’s nothing we can do about it at the moment.
All that said, though, the dude can still be a traitor even if he and his posse of supporting crooks say he isn’t one. They can’t Fake News everything away.
On the very narrow and specific issue of declassifying documents, I’m sure you’re right. On the more general use of the word “serious”, you’re so far off base that you’re in the next stadium. I decline to indulge this particular effort at argument-by-pedantry.
I’m then ok with accusing Agent Orange of that. 
So, essentially, you are saying Trump can do anything he likes with regard to Russia (or any other country) and is totally immune to any legal consequence. He could hand Putin a list of all US spies and nothing would be done about it. At worst he could be impeached.
Well, this is my understanding of the situation too. Our country wasn’t set up with protections against having a sleazy criminal traitorous scumbag as president, because our stary-eyed founding fathers didn’t expect this situation to ever arise. I mean, we have the electoral college there to separate the presidential selection from the foolishness of the rabble after all.
That might insulate him from being criminally charged, but the first amendment insulates the people accusing him. I suppose he might go after them in the civil courts for libel/slander, and I’d kinda like to see him try.
…Damn ivory tower college types, listing to their liberalippie professors talk about how evil America is…
Yes.
But because polls consistently show a not-insubstantial segment of the populace as remaining loyal Trump fans. . . Out of curiosity: assume for a moment that Trump, for whatever reason, survives the various maelstroms of political condemnation, runs again in 2020, and is re-elected.
Would that cause you to concede that enough of the population does NOT think he’s a traitor as to kill the argument?
Oh, absolutely. Everyone has the right to say it.
My point here, however, is to be clear that what they’re saying is based on a personal opinion of Trump’s traitorous ways against the spirit of what they believe our country should stand for, as opposed to a legal evaluation of the crime of treason.
Nope. People susceptible to his bullshit (and more statistically likely to be racist and nationalistic) are demonstrably more likely to vote than the average person. It’s a little sickening to say, but I do not consider elections to be valid polls of the opinion of the populace.
Not to mention, it’s entirely possible to think the dude is a traitor and vote for him anyway. For a very basic example, any Russian spies who wrangle in their way into the voting booth would likely do so in a heartbeat.
Er…
Trump has the authority to declassify any information. So yes: he could hand Putin a list of all US spies without breaking a single law.
I don’t know that he could do “anything he likes.” But he could disclose any information he likes, with the only remedy being impeachment. And once he’s impeached, convicted, and removed from office, he’d be liable for criminal prosecution for anything else he did that was criminal, but almost certainly NOT for disclosure of previously classified information.
Others might not care. They might vote for Trump even though he’s a Russian asset on the basis of his promise to make all the Muslims go away. They might vote for Trump even though he’s a Russian asset on the basis of he’ll nominate a supreme court Justice who will give the Russian-asset-supporter his way on a subject dear to his own heart, such as abortion. They might vote for Trump even though he’s a Russian asset because they have their eye on a really sweet hammock they can buy with their tax break.
No, I don’t see how that follows. They may have only a lay interpretation of the relevant laws and a limited understanding of how a case like this would (very very slowly, in the unlikely event it ever started) play out, but I think a dispassionate argument that Trump has done genuine harm to the U.S. and to the benefit of Russia and others can be made even if it doesn’t (and very likely couldn’t) get prosecuted.
I’ll grant you that anyone calling for Trump to be hauled from the White House and hung from the nearest lamp-post is letting their emotions get the better of them, but saying Trump could at the very least be investigated for treason doesn’t seem like much of a stretch to me. Further, he could plausibly be an actual traitor even if there is virtually no chance whatsoever that he could ever be criminally charged as one.
Personally, I think the greater problem is the determinedly-ignorant subculture infecting your country that got him elected in the first place. Whatever the legion of personal failings suffered by Donald Trump, the existence of President Trump is a symptom of a tumour, not a tumour itself. It’s satisfying to contemplate its excision, but the underlying condition remains.
For the record and full disclosure, I believe that trump is a traitor against America who has committed a fuckload of crimes for which he could be prosecuted if we ever figured out whether we can prosecute a president, but who has not committed actions matching the very specific legal construct known as the formal crime of ‘treason’.
Yet.
As far as we know.
Well, as far as we know we know. Who knows what Mueller knows.
One hundred percent agree with the general thought: we have no idea what Mueller knows, and what he can prove. And given Trump’s . . . loose relationship with conforming his conduct to the lawful, I would not be shocked if Mueller knows enough to indict former President Trump on a wide variety of charges.
No. He needs to win an actual majority of the vote (50% +1) then I would concede enough of the population does not think he is a traitor.
I know. That’s why I chose that example.
I would like to believe no one is above the law but if a president can hand over state secrets to an enemy without legal repercussions I submit the president is above the law in a number of areas.
As begbert2 noted, the FFs never conceived of someone like Trump obtaining the presidency along with a congress too craven to be a check on his power. Apparently there is no legal check on that power either.
If you consider, even for just a moment, that Trump is beholden to Putin in some fashion that should really scare you.
I guess I’m not following here. How does the fact that the president can set the classification and disclosure of confidential information equate to him being unchecked in power? There are many checks on the presidents powers, not just the congress. Certainly congresses role is to be one of the checks, and it’s a role that they don’t seem to be doing that great a job at. But that could change after the next election cycle…and almost certainly will change at some point, as it always does.
Out of curiosity, did you think Obama had unlimited and unchecked power when he was in office? Trump essentially has the same powers Obama did, especially in Obama’s first term when the Dems controlled the house and senate. That would have been, IIRC, from 2009-2011. Was Obama unchecked in power then? What about Bush II?
I think it is a flaw in the system if the president (any president) is able to hand over a state secret unilaterally and with impunity. Till now we always figured a president would never be the sort who could remotely contemplate such a thing but now we must contemplate it because it has a real, non-zero chance of happening.
Yes, I realize all presidents have this power and as I just said I think it is a flaw in the system. That said I never thought it was something we really had to worry about with any of our presidents, democrat or republican, till now.