On Monday, President Donald Trump denied that Russia interfered with the 2016 election. What Trump did Monday flies in the face of U.S. intelligence agencies. Trump went against the CIA, FBI and NSA to side with the authoritarian ruler of a geopolitical foe. This begs the question: Is he really still acting like our president?
Here’s what you need to know about the 2016 election meddling, and what our U.S. intelligence agencies have said about it. First, the Justice Department, through the special counsel, indicted 12 Russian intelligence officers for meddling in the election. But the findings aren’t out of the Justice Department alone. On the list of those who have recognized Russia’s election meddling are: the Senate intelligence committee, the House intelligence committee, the director of national intelligence, Secretary of Defense James Mattis (appointed by Trump), his own Secretary of State and former CIA director Mike Pompeo, the National Security adviser and best of all, his own press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
So why won’t Trump say it was the Russians?
As an American, you have to wonder why your own president, the leader of your country and poster boy of the free world, won’t acknowledge something so simple, so basic, as to have the entire consensus of the intelligence community. Why deny what the overwhelming amount of evidence is screaming? The only possible answer is that Trump is more afraid of Russian President Vladimir Putin than he is committed to defending the U.S.
Let’s drop the act. You can go ahead and forget about Trump’s wanting to “normalize relations” with Russia. Forget about “easing the tension.” You can safely toss “he wants diplomacy with a country that was once our enemy” out the window. Secretary of State Pompeo and I are on opposite ends of the political spectrum, so I take what he says with a heaping tablespoon of salt. But when Pompeo, despite his right-wing views, says “I am confident that the Russians meddled in this election … This threat is real,” I believe him. We can put politics aside for a minute and recognize this threat to our democracy.
Why can’t Trump?
Trump showed us where his loyalties lie at the Helsinki press conference. Not with his own government. Not with his own country. Not with democracy. Not with Americans. It has become so glaringly obvious, so apparent, so neon, so egregious, that we cannot afford to wait. Trump must be impeached, and I do not say this lightly. He is, through inaction and cowardice, promoting the interests of Putin over our own. He has undercut the U.S. and its interests at every turn.
Remember when Trump won? And everyone went out into the street and chanted “Not my president?” Some said that was ridiculous. He is in office, and I am citizen, after all. But after these two years, I didn’t make that statement come true. He did. Trump abandoned us first. He is not our president. He never was.
Stephan Chamberlin is a UF political science junior. His column comes out Tuesday and Thursday.
