Trump––Russian Stooge or Traitor? Which is Worse?

Rachel Maddow’s daily explanations of Kremlingate have become must-viewing. Here she goes through some of the riveting testimony in the Senate Intelligence Committee (the one that isn’t being derailed by its Republican chairman) which describes how the Russian cyber war on our democracy worked by employing the cooperation of the Republicans. At least certain key Republicans in the Trump machine.

Reported in the Guardian: The Russian “active measures” to corrupt and shift our democracy how they wanted worked as well as they did, electing their guy, because their guy Trump was actively cooperating with these active measures Russia was using, the false stories, the outright distortions. So Trump was either a traitor or a stooge who didn’t know he was in their control, doing what they wanted. Which is worse?

Russia hates the enormous respect America gets from the rest of the world, so what do they do? They try to degrade our image. They promote a clown as a major party candidate and he wins. And after he wins he continues to sing from their songbook, which compounds American disgrace. Our president is a stooge of a foreign power and behaves like a two year-old on global news media. If we elected him we are as stupid as he is. Did we elect him?

One device the Russians are using is manipulating and energizing and weaponizing our most shameful and disgraceful traits, like racism and xenophobia and sexism. And, presto!, the U.S. is no better than any other country, and by the looks of it is much worse. Game to Russia. Reported by SLATE.

What is upsetting is how clearly these stupid behaviors and prejudices and hatreds and indecencies correspond with core Republican Party values, the negative unAmerican values trumpeted to please the base.

If you track the sudden and alarming changes taking place since January you might even think Russia is managing, through its assets in the White House, to change the U.S. into something much more like Russia, an autocracy where people live under the ruler’s thumb and are lied to daily and because they are so degraded they drink themselves to an early death.

Questions have been raised whether Trump was not only personally compromised by his Russia connections and Russian debts––but was his staff staffed by Russian operatives from the start? From CBS News.

Stories are now circulating that Michael Flynn may have been compromised by the old “attractive female spy” trick the Russians have used for decades. From the Palmer Report.