So now we're all supposed to hate Canada, too? Because Canadians invaded us in the War of 1812 and burned down Trump's house? And Prime Minister Justin Trudeau committed the crime of making President Trump look weak before the summit with Kim Jong-Un? These could easily be plot points from a 1980's Canadian comedy starring John Candy and Rick Moranis, yet the American public is asked to accept them as just another day in the life of the Trump administration.
But the president's moronic attempts to demonize our neighbor to the north are only one facet of the wrecking ball he has taken to American allies and alliances at the G-7 meeting this weekend.
However you might feel about trade imbalances and the practices of our economic partners, the idea that the remedy is to blow up trading rules that the United States itself helped put in place, in favor of a destabilized and unpredictable situation that literally risks the health of the world economy, is simply madness. But this is only part of what's happening, because these economic attacks on our friends are intertwined with deeply unsettling political maneuvers to separate the United States from long-time allies. And as so many times before during this demented presidency, this political distancing reflects the malign gravitational pull of Russia on Donald Trump, as his criticisms of allies at the G-7 meeting were combined with a demand to admit Russia back to the group. The reason Russian is no longer welcome to these meetings, of course, is that it annexed Crimea and invaded Ukraine, acts of barbarism and warmongering that the president would now have us believe were actually caused by Barack Obama — a slander against our previous president that is both deeply un-American and deeply stupid. No one but Vladimir Putin made Russia do such things.
As many have been pointing out, Donald Trump's blows against our alliances, in the face of decades of bipartisan consensus over U.S. foreign policy, are serving Russia's agenda to an unmistakable extent. The context for understanding the true horror of this is Russia's interference in the 2016 election in favor of Donald Trump. Over at Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall made the case Friday that, whether or not we have all the pieces of what arrangements were made or pressures brought to bear on the president, his actions are identical to those of a person who is compromised by Vladimir Putin and acting in the Russian leader's interests, at the expense of the United States. I strongly encourage everyone to read the piece: it neatly recaps the awful consonance between Russian goals and Trump's behavior, and captures where we are in terms of accepting this baseline reality.
But if Trump's behavior towards Justin Trudeau is out of a 1980's political satire penned by Gary Trudeau, the overwhelming evidence that he's a puppet of the Kremlin is the stuff of Cold War spy fiction, not to mention the ravings of right wingers claiming the same of presidents from Truman to Carter. So our situation, far from being unimaginable, has already been highly imagined — but still it has the uncanny feel of something beyond the bounds of reality come to actual life. We are in uncharted waters, but it is imperative that Americans understand that this is in fact our reality, much like we had to accept the reality that the Twin Towers had been knocked down by terrorists in an act that so many of us felt was like something out of a Hollywood action film.
The larger story, of course, is not only that Donald Trump appears to be serving the Kremlin's interests, but is attempting to subvert and destroy our government in order to protect himself from the consequences of his treasonous behavior. He calls the investigation of collusion between his campaign and the Russians a witch hunt, despite the multiple indictments and guilty pleas secured by Robert Mueller.
I understand the reluctance of many Democrats to highlight the fact of Donald Trump's collusion with and ongoing alignment with Russian interests; they have made an assessment, one backed up by polling data, that Americans want their leaders to focus on issues that affect their daily lives. In a deeply ironic twist, the fact that the president may be subordinating U.S. interests to Russian ones is considered too big and abstract for Americans to handle. But the reality, outside of public perception, is that this situation is an existential threat to the United States — both at a purely national security level, and also within the framework that these Democratic politicians claim to be concerned about, on questions of whether the president can be trusted to do the right things for the economy and other domestic issues.
I can't recall where I read it, but one commentator made the point recently that part of the Democratic reluctance to fully articulate the known extent of Donald Trump's perfidy is that it would then require them to take action, and that they are both uncertain as to what actions to take and as to whether they have the political clout to accomplish anything. This feels spot on, and goes back to something I discussed in an earlier post — that Democrats are in a bind due to confusing what they need to do as patriotic Americans versus what they need to do to gain political advantage. It is not that these two things aren't in a necessary and legitimate tension — after all, for nearly all issues, politicians advance the goals of their party by acting in ways that also increase their political power, i.e. campaigning on ideas and legislation that they think enough voters support to vote them into office so that they can then implement these ideas and legislation.
But for Democrats to continue to behave as if this president is not likely under the sway of a foreign power's influence is to risk complicity in his offenses against our nation, and to fail our historical moment with potentially catastrophic consequences. This is especially true when nearly all GOP congressmen and senators are happy to run interference for this presidency, even if it means participating in the destruction of our democracy. The clincher for me is that, far from ginning up a fake "witch hunt," as the president would have it, Democrats could easily make the case that they are responding to the daily ways in which Donald Trump himself draws attention to his complicity in a frightening and unacceptable attack on the United States. It is Donald Trump who inexplicably calls our allies enemies, and our enemies friends; it is Donald Trump who lies, day and night, through Twitter and spoken rant, about not only the facts of Russian collusion with his campaign, but about there having been no Russian interference at all in the election. It is almost as if, hamstrung by a guilty conscience and a deep impulsiveness, Trump is driven to such self-destructive obsessions.
And to bring it back to Democratic concerns that voters want them to fight for pocketbook issues rather than hard-to-follow national security concerns — the Democrats should make the framing argument that Donald Trump's collusion can be seen on a continuum with a fake populist economic agenda that is actually enriching the wealthy and ignoring Americans who labor for a living. He has scammed us all to benefit himself and his ilk, a fact evidenced by everything from the soak-the-rich-with-refunds tax bill, to attempts to take health insurance away from ordinary Americans, to inciting a trade war that will hit Americans in the pocketbook. Any Democrat intimidated by Trump’s faux populist appeals is blind to his fakery, and is not arguing nearly hard enough for the very real reforms required for the U.S. economy and political system. To relate this to the events of this weekend: Donald Trump's constant attacks on our trading partners, and on immigrants, is how he does an end run around talking in more substantive ways about our economic problems — problems which have far less to do with being taken advantage of by these partners, and far more to do with an economic arrangement in our country that disproportionately rewards the wealthy at the expense of everyone else.
