After two weeks of explosive impeachment testimony detailing the corrupt “quid pro quo” of President Donald Trump pressuring Ukraine to announce criminal investigations benefitting his reelection in exchange for hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military assistance, the question remains: Does it matter if Senate Republicans who will decide whether to remove Trump from office don’t care?
Yes, it does. Few Republican senators have ever cared what unethical or corrupt tactics Trump uses to win elections as long as they retain their own hold on power. That won’t change until Republican voters themselves become so appalled by the corruption of their own party they start abandoning Trump and all the other Republicans who refuse to hold him accountable.
That’s why the greatest threat to the future of all Republicans was the testimony of Fiona Hill, a top Russian expert for the National Security Council. Hill publicly called out Trump and Republicans for either wittingly or unwittingly acting as Russian agents by supporting Trump’s demand for an investigation into his fraudulent claim Ukraine, rather than Russia, illegally interfered in the 2016 presidential election
“Some of you appear to believe that Russia and its Security Service did not conduct a campaign against our country, and that, perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did,” Hill said. “This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian Security Service themselves... Right now, Russia’s Security Service and their proxies have geared up to repeat their interference in the 2020 election. We’re running out of time to stop them. I would ask that you please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests.”
Anyone who lived through the Cold War with Russia when Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev threatened to bury democracy has to be amazed at Trump’s success in convincing conservative Republicans in Congress to join him in denying the truth Hill testified to: “Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions in 2016... It is beyond dispute.”
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That hasn’t prevented Trump from disputing it and openly acting as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s strongest public advocate on the world stage. Americans cringe remembering Trump standing alongside Putin in Helsinki supporting Russia’s denials it interfered in the U.S. election over the unanimous conclusion of America’s intelligence agencies. “President Putin says it’s not Russia,” Trump said. “I don’t see any reason why it would be.” Who could doubt the denial of a former KGB agent about whether he’s committed crimes against America?
One of Trump’s first acts as president was to threaten to pull out of NATO, the democratic alliance of nations that has deterred Russian aggression for 70 years. Trump has become Putin’s chief world sponsor advocating Russia’s readmission to the G-7, an organization of industrial democracies that expelled Russia in 2014 for invading Ukraine. Trump added to the insult by publicly urging Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to get together with Putin “and solve your problem,” because “I really believe that President Putin would like to do something.” (He sure would.) With Ukrainians still dying every week from Russian attacks, it was like proposing President George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden make up and let bygones be bygones after 9/11.
No one really knows why Trump puts Russia’s interests above those of his own country. There have always been rumors of Russian blackmail involving tapes from Trump’s Moscow visit, but Trump has always survived every sleazy sexual revelation. It could be much simpler, either a financial transaction or Trump could just be as childlike as he occasionally appears and easily manipulated by anyone flattering his monumental ego.
Republican Congressman Devin Nunes opened every impeachment hearing denouncing the Democrats’ “Russian hoax.” You know, that hoax resulting in indictments of 12 Russian military intelligence officers and 13 Russian nationals for their country’s widespread election interference to help elect Trump. Nunes says it’s absurd for anyone to consider Trump a Russian agent, which is, of course, exactly what another Russian agent would say.
Most media attention during the impeachment hearings focused on Trump’s demand for a Ukrainian criminal investigation into his potential political opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden. There’s something especially sinister and un-American about using foreign law enforcement agencies to destroy prominent U.S. citizens for political reasons.
But the other investigation Trump wanted was just as disturbing—trying to frame the struggling democracy of Ukraine for crimes Russia committed to influence the outcome of our presidential election using a crazy conspiracy theory concocted by Russian military intelligence.
There are plenty of rightwing Republicans who still recognize Russia as our democracy’s greatest enemy. If those fervent anti-communists suddenly wake up to what their party has become while watching Senate Republicans exonerate Trump in a sham impeachment trial, Trump and his elected Republican enablers could all lose their jobs in 2020.
