The Big Question

We thought that the big question was: Did Trump collaborate with the Russians to sabotage Hillary’s campaign? We don’t yet know the truth – but let’s look at what we do know:

1. Trump’s businesses have been in deep financial trouble a number of times over the past ten years – and many of them went bankrupt. But in the midst of the financial crisis, when nobody was lending money, all Trump’s financial problems went away – because of huge influx of money. We know that, through a few slips of the tongue, the Russians have been the source of millions of dollars to the Trump organization. When Trump talks about investments in Russia, he chooses his words carefully, “I have nothing in Russia”, which may be true, but the real question is: “What does Russia have invested in Trump?” Given that Russia is a kleptocracy, with all major public and private companies run by Putin’s cronies, if he owes money to any Russian banks then he owes it to Putin. And if he owes millions (or billions), then Putin OWNS Trump.
2. Trump won’t release his tax returns despite the fact that it is costing him the trust and votes of many people. Why would he do that? Because there is something in his tax returns that will devastate his credibility. What could be that damaging? Certainly not that he’s rich, or that he has not been paying taxes – those are established facts and have even been touted by Trump as a sign that “I’m smart”. No, it’s something really bad that would turn his voters away. It’s not hard to figure out that the only thing that would be so bad as to suffer the loss of so many voters is that the Tax returns would show the loan repayments to Russian banks. Nothing else makes sense.
3. During the 2016 campaign, Trump’s team met with the Russians a massive number of times (reported to be as many as 20). Many of these messages were in European or Asian locations. Why would a busy person need to travel to Europe or Asia to have a discussion? Because what they have to say is so secretive that they don’t want anyone to know that the meeting is occurring. Of course some of the meetings were in the US, and many of those were short. (How long does it take to say “Yes, we will do your bidding?”). There are no legitimate political reasons for this number of secretive meetings – but there if there was collusion on a regular basis, it would take quite a bit of coordination – which explains the need for a large number of meetings.
4. We have the special case of Michael Flynn. He was so sure of himself in the weeks after Trump was elected (do you remember how crazy that period was?) that he didn’t even bother to hide his tracks when he met with the Russians. Then he lied about it, and Trump reluctantly tossed him overboard. But Trump couldn’t have Flynn telling the truth, because that would cause the whole thing to collapse. So he pressured James Comey to let Flynn go – knowing that he committed a crime in doing so – because he believed the risks of committing Obstruction of Justice were smaller than the risks of Flynn going public with his story.
5. Now we come to Trump’s obsession with the various investigations. Why is he so obsessed? Why did he fire Comey when he was thinking about the “Russia thing”? Is it because he has nothing to hide? If that was the case, he’d show all his cards which would make the whole thing go away. But instead he’s doing everything that a guilty party would do. He’s impugning the integrity of the people involved, of the institutions themselves, and of course of the press who merely reports what those in his administration are telling them.

But now that we have the details of Flynn’s activities, we see that the question has changed. It’s not a question of collusion, but a question of Treason. What else would you call betraying your country for personal gain? When Flynn told Russian Ambassador Kislyak that the incoming Trump administration would undo the punishments that had just been issued by the President of the US, he was betraying his country.

This cannot be allowed to stand. Trump must go. If there are any Patriots in the Republican Party, they need to stand up now – or be forever dammed as traitors.

Stay tuned.