Putin's Fellow Travelers

The Trumpers are walking a fine line

“The degree of Russian compromise of the Republican party is one of the great stories of American political history. Those of us who worked within the party saw it happen, accompanied by a right-wing media industry that found it profitable to label Russian influence a ‘hoax.'”

—Stuart Stephens

“In our nation’s 248-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump. He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him. He can never be trusted with power again.”

—Dick Cheney

The New York Times/Siena poll that shows Trump ahead, 48-47, is just one poll, but it certainly is a buzzkill. It may be an outlier, but probably not. It may be a snapshot, pre-debate—a debate more significant than the usual because of how little-known Harris is. The poll may also be a judgment on the foolish conservatism of the Harris campaign: why are they stashing her? Her best debate prep might be taking real questions from actual civilians at town meetings. She should be everywhere.

This comes after a depressing week that offered further evidence of the crypto-fascism of the Trump campaign. There was Tucker Carlson entertaining Nazis on his platform, or whatever he calls it. There was Trump pre-heating an Elon Musk oligarchy, naming him—in Orwellian fashion—his Efficiency Czar. And yes, the Russians were back in town, shoveling hundreds of thousands of dollars at punk-wingnuts and the shadowy Tenet company. And how does the paragon of stolid free-enterprise conservatism, the Wall Street Journal, respond? Well, it equivocates. It has suddenly become the unlikely bastion of on-the-other-handism. Kimberly Strassel, that doyenne of ideological disingenuousness, argues that the U.S. Department of Justice is more of a threat to our election integrity than the Russki shenanigans:

The most striking part of the Wednesday press conference in which the department unveiled indictments against covert Russian actors was its lack of self-awareness. As if this weren’t the same government agency that fed us the Trump-Russia collusion lies of 2016 (and 2017 and 2018 and 2019), an ally of an intelligence community that four years ago falsely branded reporting about Hunter Biden’s laptop “disinformation.” Whatever the merits of this week’s actions against Russians—they look legit—the Justice Department’s failure to acknowledge it has an enormous credibility problem is almost comical.

Let’s leave aside Strassel’s cracked moral equivalence: Hunter Biden’s laptop v. Russian interference in our election? Come on, girl. Far more important is her insistence that the Justice Department was only pursuing “collusion” between Trump and the Russians—and that it was a phony quest. (By the way, I don’t watch Rachel Maddow—I have a congenital allergy to smug—but has she ever apologized to her audience for a year’s worth of collusion blather?)

The point is, there didn’t need to be collusion between Trump and the Russkies. They were on the same page all along. Robert Mueller found conclusively that the Russians were working overtime to tilt the 2016 election to Trump. Which should have been considered outrageous by American patriots. The Democrats, following Maddow down her rathole, didn’t make nearly enough of that. And Kimberly Strassel—who surely would have been outraged if a Democratic candidate was being helped by a foreign enemy—somehow has missed the plot: The Justice Department proved there wasn’t collusion, but there was massive interference—indeed, subsequent research has suggested Russian disinformation might have thrown enough votes to Jill Stein in Milwaukee, Detroit, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh to tilt the election.

Why are the Russians doing this? Why are so-called conservatives like Strassel so tolerant of the interference? I’m willing to give Trump the benefit of the doubt: I’m willing to ignore his lifetime of squalid transactionality and surmise that he hasn’t been bought or compromised by Putin. I’m willing to put the best face on it: That his Pooty-Poot sycophancy is a perverse form of Stockholm Syndrome, a crypto-sexual attachment to a bully. Only in this case the bully is another desperate weakling, who presides over a country that is no more than a “gas station with nukes,” as John McCain once put it. Trump admires the tinpot authoritarian lifestyle.

But still: The Russians are interfering in our election on Trump’s behalf. That is undeniable. And the Republican Party is riddled with Neo-fascist punks like Tucker and the tweeters. And Trump is still running neck-and-neck with Kamala Harris? Shouldn’t we be, well… alarmed? Shouldn’t our hair be smoldering?

Isn’t it time for…

All Hands on Deck?

I defer to Charlie Sykes to make the plea:

As a contrarian, I’m willing to concede that on his own [Dick Cheney] is unlikely to move many votes. But that’s the point: He’s not on his own. There is a critical mass of conservative Republicans who are appalled and disgusted by Donald Trump but have been reluctant to take the ultimate step of endorsing his Democratic opponent. Earlier this week, Liz Cheney crossed that line. And now, her father has opened the door even further.

Like his daughter, Cheney did not frame his decision in left-right or conservative-liberal terms. He didn’t ask his fellow Republicans to abandon their conservative principles. Instead, he said: “As citizens, we each have a duty to put country above partisanship to defend our Constitution.”

Will others follow? Most GOP politicians have already cast their lots with Trump. But the pols are not the only ones who might count this year.

Indeed, I would hope that George W. and Jeb Bush would step up…and that people like John Sununu and Nikki Haley would withdraw their craven endorsements…and beyond them, there are a raft of respected former military men—Mattis, Milley, McMaster, Kelly, Petraeus—who should step up, too. Yes, the political independence of the military is sacred but, guys, you’re retired now. And beyond them, I would hope that even Rupert Murdoch—the owner of the Wall Street Journal and Fox News—would admit, in his capacity as a human being, that he thinks Trump is a dangerous jerk (which he does) and so he has decided to support Harris, just once, this time.

I would also hope that all the people Trump suckered—the people who actually believed him when he said he won the election—will react with shame and fury now that he has admitted that he lost “by a whisker.” What more evidence do you need of the man’s squalor?

Now is the time for all good people to come to the aid of their country. That country is not Russia. Now is also the time for all good conservatives to ask the real question: Why are the Russians so intent on re-electing Trump? There is a word that was used to describe for non-colluding Russophiles. It was often deployed against America’s hapless, idiot communists, who were rooting for the Soviets back in the day. They were called fellow travelers, not quite traitors, but treasonous in spirit. People like Kimberly Strassel should want to avoid even the slightest whisper of a hint of that stain.