Trump And Putin Vs. America

[DonViejo]

Steve Chapman

July 19, 2018 4:17 am

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,

In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side.

—James Russell Lowell, “The Present Crisis,” 1845

Donald Trump faced that moment Monday in Helsinki, meeting privately for more than two hours with Vladimir Putin and taking part in a news conference afterward. He made unmistakably clear which side he takes — and it’s not America’s.

It was a performance that was simultaneously predictable and astonishing. Anyone who has paid attention to Trump’s policies and attitude toward the Russian autocrat saw nothing more than the dismal culmination of his long pattern of accommodation and appeasement. But it was still hard to imagine beforehand that Trump — even Trump — would conduct himself so obsequiously with Putin while blatantly defying his advisers, the U.S. intelligence community and Republicans in Congress.

Previous presidents considered pre-emptive attacks against our enemies to protect our security. This was the first pre-emptive capitulation, and it erodes our security. Given what we saw Monday, if Trump faced the prospect of impeachment, it would hardly be surprising if he sought political asylum in Russia.

He’s a modern version of Vidkun Quisling, the Norwegian politician who urged Hitler to invade and gained his country’s presidency during the Nazi occupation. The term “quisling” soon became a synonym for “traitor.”

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