So Trump Didn't Collude -- He's Still the Most Dangerous President in U.S. History

[babylonsister]

https://prospect.org/article/so-trump-didnt-collude-hes-still-most-dangerous-president-us-history


So Trump Didn’t Collude -- He’s Still the Most Dangerous President in U.S. History
Harold Meyerson
March 26, 2019
With or without Russia, the president poses a grave threat to our republic.

This article originally appeared at The Los Angeles Times. Subscribe here.

snip//

Trump’s most glaring misdeeds never involved, or required, collusion. He didn’t need Putin’s help to slander Clinton—or to become the most dangerous president in our history.

When great nations topple, it’s usually because they’re rotting from within, with one set of their residents pitted against another.Trump’s chief contribution has been to accelerate America’s rot by demonizing a large portion of the nation’s citizenry. His deep-seated racism has resonated with many anxious, provincial whites and set the stage for the rise we’ve seen in hate crimes. His fragile narcissism—deeming anyone, dead (John McCain) or alive, who fails to extol him to be an enemy worthy of destruction—has poisoned an already vituperative public discourse.

To be sure, Trump doesn’t pry apart our republic all by himself. He has plenty of help from the echo chamber of Fox News and talk radio, and from complaisant and cowed Republican elected officials who fear that their party’s voters will oust them in primaries unless they support Trump’s broadsides or at least mute their criticism of him.

For that matter, Republicans have been playing the race card and waging culture wars ever since Richard Nixon realized that the votes of many Southern (and some Northern) whites were his for the taking by demonizing the same minority activists, antiwar protestors and intellectuals whom Alabama Governor George Wallace, in his failed bids for the presidency, had flayed. But Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and their Republican successors had to appeal to more moderate voters as well; their attacks came in dog whistles and more genteel prose. They didn’t divide us quite so starkly, or encourage Klansmen to take their hoods out of mothballs.

snip//

Trump’s affinity for blood and soil nationalism and the violence that frequently accompanies it is evident in what passes for his foreign policy, which mixes his manifest indifference to our democratic allies with his admiration for thugs of all nations, no matter their ostensible ideology: Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte, and, yes, Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

But Trump didn’t need help from that rogues’ gallery to incite the worst in us. Decades of economic stagnation and the prompting of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News rabble-rousers, combined with nearly half a millennium of racism, paved the way for him. In accepting the Republicans’ nomination in 2016, he claimed, “I alone can fix” what ails America. And, with no assist from Putin, he—if not alone, then with no foreign assistance—has betrayed our promise and imperiled our land.

[Jarqui]

1. I disagree with the title "Trump didn't collude"

As of March 2019, Mueller was unable to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump colluded.

But there was evidence to the level of something like "probable cause" at a minimum to get someone like Mueller to look into it. I'm sure he found more evidence of it as opposed to no more - like Manafort giving campaign data to the Russians for example.

Trump probably colluded. Mueller wasn't able to prove it yet beyond a reasonable doubt. A significant part of the reasons for that is Trump appears to have obstructed Mueller from finding that evidence as all the lying suggests.

[anarch]

2. more, "the GOP says you can't prove that he colluded, and they wouldn't have done anything anyway"

But so what, that's not even the main issue, etc.

[Bluepinky]

3. He colluded in plain sight.

What do you call asking for Russia to find Hillary Clinton’s e-mails at a televised campaign rally? Then, voila, days later the e-mails are leaked to the public.

Also, maybe Trump didn’t collude with the Russian government per se, but he did collude with oligarchs who are close to and work with Putin.