Ego-in-Chief

You can say a lot of things about the FBI’s investigation into election meddling or Robert Mueller’s investigation. But to just accept outright that Russia did nothing simply because Vladimir Putin says so, is not one of them. The fact that Trump did exactly that, in a televised press conference, is more than a little concerning.

Does this mean Trump is a pawn of Putin, that Putin is controlling him through blackmail and collusion? No, it’s probably much sadder than that. It’s possible there is direct collusion here but the far more likely answer is that Putin is merely perfectly manipulating Trump to do exactly what he wants.

Trump has an incredibly fragile ego. The Russians meddle with elections, US intelligence identifies this, and Trump is incapable of believing it. To do so would mean that his election win might not be because of how awesome he is. And according to him, he is awesome.

So now, our election process has been manipulated by a foreign power. Not much most likely, but still something to be concerned about. Instead of addressing it our President denies it. This just further plays into Putin’s goal of undermining the integrity of the US faith in our government and our election system.

Trump’s refusal to condemn Russia’s actions and to accept that something happened is doing more damage to the US system than anything the Russians actually did. His continued cries of “Fake News” about anything that makes him look bad or he disagrees with is eroding our ability to believe reliable news sources.

Our democracy is being eroded from within. What the Russian’s did should have been inconsequential and resulted in a collective sigh of “really Putin?”. Instead, it’s turned into this fiasco because of Trump’s ego. It may not be pre-meditated but treason is treason.