Are Dems "Putin" Us On?

• Author: Bresler, Robert J.
• Position: STATE OF THE NATION - Vladimir Putin

THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN began, despite its eventual success, as an amateurish one-man show. It later added substantial staff, including hangers-on Carter Page and George Papadopoulos. Both naively may have believed in a cooperative relationship with Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin. In fact, during the campaign, so did Donald Trump but, as the Trump Administration established its national security team, it was staffed with hard-nosed skeptics--such as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster--who had serious reservations about any cooperation with Putin.

None of this matters to Pres. Trump's critics. From the moment he was elected, no president in living memory has garnered as much hatred. The very sight of him sends many into wild paroxysms of uncontrollable anger. Before he took the oath of office, some were forming what they called the "Resistance," conjuring up images of the heroic World War II French Resistance fighters--against the Nazi occupation--who orchestrated numerous acts of sabotage, such as blowing up train tracks, destroying telephone wires, and interrupting the electrical power grid. While nothing like that explicitly was suggested by this new so-called Resistance, the subtext was clear: Trump is a tyrant and opposition to all things Trump is justified beyond traditional democratic means.

In addition to being labeled some kind of fascist (what kind never is quite explained), Trump was considered a pawn of Putin. According to this narrative, Putin and Trump somehow "colluded" to beat Hillary Clinton and win the election.

Keith Olbermann, one-time sportscaster and now self-appointed political authority, in a frenzy of hysteria, claimed that, with Trump in the White House, it would be "the end of the United States as an independent country." Olbermann, after wiping the foam from his mouth, continued his rant that Trump was a "puppet put in power by Vladimir Putin and... those who ignore these elemental, existential facts--Democrats or Republicans--are traitors to this country and will immediately and forever after be held accountable."

While others were not quite as ready as Olbermann to erect the gallows, variations of this claim were so insistent that Special Counsel Robert Mueller was appointed to get to the bottom of all this collusion. To make this charge ever more sinister, Democrats, without a blush, had changed their tune. Not so long ago they were singing...