Amid allegations of
Russian interference with our elections, Republicans are scrambling, trying to
defend the leader of their party. The latest defense, which comes from Lindsey
Graham and sort of from Paul Ryan, is that Trump is too stupid to collude with
the Russians.
After former FBI Director James Comey testified
in front of Congress, that yes, Trump did ask him to drop the investigation
into former national security advisor Michael Flynn.
The best defense House Speaker Paul Ryan could
come up with was that Trump is new at this. He simply didn’t know it wasn’t
cool to pressure the head of the FBI.
“The President’s new at this. He’s new to government. So, he probably wasn’t steeped in the long-running protocols that establish the relationships between DOJ, FBI and White Houses. He’s just new to this.”Pushed further by CNN, Ryan said, “I’m not saying it’s an acceptable excuse. It’s just my observation.”“He’s new at government, and so therefore I think that he — he is learning as he goes,” Ryan said.Source: CNN
Now, Sen. Lindsey Graham has taken that argument a step further and said that Trump is too incompetent to have colluded with the Russians.
“He doesn’t believe he did anything wrong with the Russians and I tend to believe him,” Graham said on CBS’ Face the Nation.
“He can’t collude with his own government. Why do you think he is colluding with the Russians?”Source: Think Progress
What Graham is ignoring is that the fact that Trump is
incompetent is likely what made him the most desirable for Russians. Russian
journalist Mikhail Fishman says this about Russian president Vladimir Putin’s
opinion on Trump:
They’re quite obviously playing Trump. They consider him a stupid, unstrategic politician. Putin is confident that he can manipulate Trump to his advantage, and he should be.In other words, Trump’s a useful idiot to them?Exactly. The Kremlin is limited in their knowledge about what’s going on in Washington, but they see the chaos and the confusion in Trump’s administration. They see the clumsiness, the inexperience. Naturally, they’re working to exploit that.
Of course, Graham and Ryan know this and that’s what’s most
dangerous of all.
While Trump might be too stupid to know that he is a stooge, the
Republican Party’s cavalier attitude about the fact that Russia might have
installed our incompetent Commander-in-Chief is perhaps the most treasonous
part of all of this.
Author Wendy
Gittleson is
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