A Washington Post report on Saturday so riled President Trump that he took to Twitter to respond, “Fake News reporting, a complete fabrication, that I am concerned about the meeting my wonderful son, Donald, had in Trump Tower. This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics - and it went nowhere. I did not know about it!” The significance of this tweet cannot be underestimated. Shortly after he was elected, the Trump team insisted that there had been “no contacts” with any Russians during the campaign. Then after the Mueller probe was launched in May 2017, the Trump administration changed its tune to “there is no collusion.”
Now, after over a year of proclaiming “no collusion” at every possible chance he got (and there’s a ton of videotape to prove it), President Trump has further qualified his position to “collusion is not a crime.” This qualification is tantamount to an admission of guilt, as the Mueller investigation zeroes in on Trump’s part in his campaign’s nefarious activities during 2016. In the first place – if one had to really split hairs about Trump’s oft repeated claim – he’s invariably voiced it in the present tense, using “is,” instead of the past tense, as in, “there was no collusion.” So, he is either telling the truth, in that, he is no longer colluding with Russia, or he’s got a Clintonian problem with what the meaning of “is” is? Let’s give Trump the benefit of the doubt and assume that he always meant “there was no collusion,” whenever he made that denial over the past year – but it increasingly has that Shakespearean feel, like the man “doth protest too much.”
As the evidence of collusion started to mount, the Trump team quickly adopted the aforementioned new talking point that was swiftly disseminated over the airwaves, most prominently on Fox News that “collusion is not a crime.” In fact, Trump was also rattled by the progress of the Mueller investigation that he had taken to Twitter earlier on Wednesday stating, “This is a terrible situation and Attorney General Jeff Sessions should stop this Rigged Witch Hunt right now, before it continues to stain our country any further.” Thus, in addition to tacitly conceding to collusion with Russia, our long-standing adversary, the president appeared to also impede justice with this imprudent tweet. Even if we grant the Trump team, its hasty public backtracking of the tweet’s intent as the president’s “opinion,” not as a presidential “directive” to the Attorney General (who in any case has recused himself from the Mueller investigation), the tweet is pretty damning from an intent to obstruct justice perspective.
But Trump is right about one thing – the question is no longer about collusion, it’s now about treason, which still needs to be proven. However, we need Mueller to establish the exact (witting or unwitting) level of the Trump campaign’s disloyalty to the country by its illicit engagement with Russia. In the interim, unlawful behavior as captured in the acronym TREASON – Trump-Russia Election Activities Suggest Operational Nexus – i.e., collusion has now clearly been established beyond any reasonable doubt. The Trump administration has finally realized when its looks like collusion, smells like collusion and feels like collusion – it must be collusion! It’s what made the Trump team change its tune to “collusion is not a crime,” which might be technically true and legally ambiguous, but it sure as hell sounds quite sleazy.
In any case, acronyms aside, everyone can agree that real treason as we all know it – is treacherous, traitorous and simply cannot be tolerated. So, for the long-term health and integrity of our nation, let’s hope that as far as Trump is concerned – a benign version of collusion holds true, that treason is never proven, and that obstruction of justice is largely what we have to worry about. But then hoping, where Trump’s word is concerned, has proven to be a big disappointment – as the Post’s Fact Checker database shows through the end of July, “In 558 days, President Trump has made 4,229 false or misleading claims.” At an average of 7.6 falsehoods a day, the prognosis for Trump’s collusion claims being benign aren’t good. So, it’s imperative that Mueller determine exactly how far the collusion went and how detrimental its effects have been to our democracy.
In any case, acronyms aside, everyone can agree that real treason as we all know it – is treacherous, traitorous and simply cannot be tolerated. So, for the long-term health and integrity of our nation, let’s hope that as far as Trump is concerned – a benign version of collusion holds true, that treason is never proven, and that obstruction of justice is largely what we have to worry about. But then hoping, where Trump’s word is concerned, has proven to be a big disappointment – as the Post’s Fact Checker database shows through the end of July, “In 558 days, President Trump has made 4,229 false or misleading claims.” At an average of 7.6 falsehoods a day, the prognosis for Trump’s collusion claims being benign aren’t good. So, it’s imperative that Mueller determine exactly how far the collusion went and how detrimental its effects have been to our democracy.
