There is a small club of crackpot conservatives who (think they) see a rather ornate conspiracy involving Russian-American mobsters, Ed Snowden, J. Assange, Ecuador, Jeff Sessions, Rudy Giuliani, and yet-unknown players inside NSA. I was just reading https://patribotics.wordpress.com/ , and it’s a bit like something in Illuminatus!
Being a traitor and committing the crime of treason aren’t the same thing.
Trump is obviously a traitor to all the principles our country was founded upon. Whether that is in part because of Russia, I don’t know.
I do think he’s more likely a “useful idiot” than a conspirator, for the reasons stated above. Trump likes anyone who strokes his ego, and hates anyone who doesn’t. Personality disorders often exist together, and that’s the borderline personality disorder part. Idealization and devaluation.
Still, he’s clearly making decisions with his monetary interests in mind. All Putin has to do is make Trump think he’ll make money.
I am so hoping that Trump will result in a lot of laws. We need mandatory psych evaluations and divesting of any monetary interests.
And fuck the psychologists who decided they had to stay mum.
You’re right, Trump is the messiah. Gawd, how did I miss that, 1 fucking redeeming factor, and a really, really weak one at that, for Trump. Well, that mitigates all the bigotry, perversion, phobias’ and lying the bastard does. I feel better already.
I’ve looked at it this way from the beginning of this presidency.
If you were a Russian Tool and your intent was to weaken the United States, what would you do as President?
Insult our allies and weaken our alliances
Insult other nations and weaken our image
Ignore Russian espionage and election interference
Refuse to implement sanctions against Russia
Severely weaken the State Department.
Undermine the Rule of Law.
Cancel trade agreements, undermining the US Economy.
Start trade wars, potentially crippling the US Economy.
Aid and Abet the Republican desire for tax cuts at all cost, ignoring the deficit.
and on and on and on.
Putin must do the Dance of Joy every day at what Trump is doing to help him.
I agree. Morons, drooling idiots, and other Trumpies need entertainment too. You can’t expect them to exist solely on a diet of Hannity, Honey Boo Boo and Duck Dynasty.
It’s a good time to reflect on the big picture, because not everything was known a year ago when this thread started.
It’s quite apparent that there was some communication between the Trump campaign and the Russians who hacked the DNC email servers, because the Trump people always seemed to know when the new bombshell was about to be dropped. This happened again and again with Roger Stone, Rudy Giuliani, and others.
We don’t know if that communication was just the Russians tipping off the Trump people that it was coming, or if there was some quid pro quo. We do know, however, that the Trump team stepping in at the convention to soften the Republican stance on Russia regarding the Ukraine was very suspicious. If it was just tipping off, then the Trump team clearly should have reported it to the FBI, but they didn’t. If there was a quid pro quo, that’s the common definition of treason. At a minimum, highly inappropriate, and possibly impeachable and with jail time.
We also know that the Trump team (Don Jr in particular) was EAGER to work with the Russians to influence the election. I’m not sure whether there’s already a law on the books to make this criminal, but it’s certainly enough that he should be shunned by civilized society.
We also know that Trump and the rest of his team initially and repeatedly said there was no communication with Russians, and we now know that they lied, again and again. That is very, very suspicious.
So we have, at a minimum, several pieces of behavior that’s highly inappropriate. And we have tons of smoke pointing to what I would call treason (although as defined in the Constitution it would have to be in a time of war).
I expect that after the government is once again in the hands of patriotic citizens, quite a few laws will be passed to specifically prohibit various things that were Simply Not Done until Putin’s Puppet went ahead and did them.
This is where I am. There was quid, there was quo. There was willingness for pro. Whether that pro is explicit or just happened to occur because both parties had a common goal to elect Trump remains to be seen, but more likely than not, there were explicit agreements made.
If you mean the Constitutional definition, no, it does not. If you mean the definition in my dictionary, the one generally meant in conversational English, there is a very significant chance he’s a traitor - I wouldn’t put even money on it, but maybe at two to one.