Jon Chait is one of dozens, perhaps hundreds if you count Twitter, voices coming out and calling Trump's behavior in Helsinki unbelievable and essentially corroboration of allegations that Putin has Trump's tiny little balls in his back pocket.
Trump's decision to essentially side with Putin over American intelligence agencies is unprecedented. Whether it constitutes treason is hard to pin down. Treason is very hard to prove in American jurisprudence, and rightfully so. If we find that Trump is giving Putin active and illegal help, then it's treason. We don't, as yet, have that evidence.
What we have is the stark and incontrovertible evidence that Trump is fundamentally un-American. If we take "American" to mean a certain set of core values, we should probably delineate them. Americans believe in liberty and political equality. Americans believe in fair play and honesty. Americans believe in hard work. Americans believe in the goodness of their country. Now, to be 100% clear, Americans very rarely practice these beliefs. We struggle to reconcile liberty and equality. We cheat and lie often enough. We know our country isn't always good. In fact, we know it's flawed, even if its flaws are seen differently on the Left and Right. I come back to what Obama used to stress, that the Constitution enjoins us to create a more perfect Union, not that the Union is already perfect. We continue to create America anew with each year and generation, but we do so under a vague set of ideals that we more or less agree on.
Trump represents none of these. He doesn't care about freedoms and he is actively contemptuous of equality. He derides fair play and is pathologically dishonest. He is incapable of hard work. And today, he demonstrated that he does not believe - even rhetorically - in the goodness of our country. He routinely sides with dictators, autocrats and thugs over the institutions of American life. He places his own fragile ego above the national interest.
Trump actually is kind of Russian. The worship of strongmen, the causual contempt for the truth, the indifference towards civil liberties, the contempt for the rule of law and gravitation towards corruption...all of these are hallmarks of Russian political culture. So maybe Putin doesn't have incriminating evidence on Trump.
Maybe he doesn't need it.
Oh, and fuck you, Republicans for foisting this treasonous fool on our country.
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