For the past 18 months, we have been barraged with daily stories about the possible connection between President Donald Trump and Russia.
And unless you have been hiding in a cave in the Galapagos Islands, after a while, the stories seem to all sound the same and you start to wonder whether all the Russia stuff is real and whether as American citizens we should care one way or another.
There is no doubt the president is hopeful that the Russia story will just go away and he can focus on tweeting nasty words at political foes and get more chances to play at golf courses that have the name Trump on the front door.
Mr. Trump’s unhappiness with the daily tales about possible collusion between his campaign and the Russian government are a real irritant because it raises the possibility that it will tarnish his November victory.
The real dilemma for the president and the country, is that the Russia story would have disappeared ages ago but for the fact that his family, friends and allies keep the mystery alive with just plain stupidity.
Pick any of the highly publicized events of the campaign and you will find some action that triggered a suspicion that Russia deeply meddled into the 2016 election.
A typical case in point is the meeting that took place in 2016 at Trump Tower, which was attended by Donald Jr., son-in-law Jared Kushner and a few close aides.
Once the news of the event unfolded Donald Jr. described it as a “nothing burger” and insisted that the discussion was meaningless. He described the assembled group as some people who wanted to talk about Russian adoptions.
Being Russia had blocked American adoptions of Russian children, it sounded like a worthy topic of discussion.
As time went by it turned out that one of the attendees was an attorney with deep ties to Vladimir Putin. Bit by bit word trickled out that the subject was a lot deeper than adoptions, and was in fact about getting campaign dirt on Hillary Clinton.
So if young Mr. Trump was honest with the federal prosecutors at the very beginning maybe that story would have died. Added to his lack of memory was the report that the President had dictated his son’s statement about the Trump Tower meeting.
These events kept the Russia story alive.
Another facet of the alleged Russia involvement was the continuous stumbles of Attorney General Jeff Sessions. At his first appearance before a Congressional committee, he apparently left out a few details about contact with Russians during the campaign. That led to a second hearing and a third hearing at which Mr. Sessions said twenty six times that he didn’t recall various events during the campaign. I have been to many meetings in my lifetime and if I remember something about a meeting, I usually can remember everything else about the meeting.
So the fact that we are still talking and reading about Russia and Trump is no accident. It is a self-inflicted wound by the winning candidate, his family, his insiders and his campaign team.
So let’s brush aside the debate over the campaign collusion and look at the big picture. Why should we care at all about all this Russia stuff?
Like it or not Russia’s direct and indirect activities are a threat to our democracy and were an attempt to destroy the democratic system.
The big social media companies failed to protect our country from truly fake news that spread like wildfire.
Money was the only object for the purveyors of instant news. If some obscure outside group pays for its ads with Russian rubles isn’t that a hint that someone out there was trying to poison the election process and divide us into two bitter camps?
If I place an advertisement on social media accusing a politician of being a pedophile, shouldn’t my request be scrutinized by a responsible company official?
Whenever the investigation of the Trump campaign by Robert Mueller ends it could lead to nowhere or a charge of obstruction of justice against the president.
But if you don’t believe that Vladimir Putin tried to destroy our democracy and meddle into our election, than it’s time to move to some other country where some tin horn dictator will run your life.
