Trump and his Republican minions push the “Russia is a friend, not an enemy” envelope at their peril

Ronald Brownstein catalogues the GOP’s drift towards support of Putinism under Trump, but the most important point he makes is that Republican leaders are not engaging in this drift wholeheartedly, because they understand the risks. 1/15

The Russification of the Republican PartyGOP lawmakers used to oppose the president’s embrace of Putin and the Kremlin. Not anymore.https://tinyurl.com/th22r45

Brownstein points out that even most Republican voters do not see Russia as an ally. That is even more true of most voters generally, as has been shown by recent survey data, including one conducted in February of this year by Gallup. 2/15

RussiaIs your overall opinion of Russia very favorable, mostly favorable, mostly unfavorable, or very unfavorable? Please say whether you consider Russia an ally of the United States, friendly, but not an …https://tinyurl.com/y273lp5z

(Note that, according to Gallup, Americans’ opposition to Russia has actually increased since Trump’s election.) 3/15

The Reagan Institute’s National Defense Survey (NDS) that was released today mostly confirmed Gallup’s findings (despite all the headlines and tweets today suggesting otherwise). 4/15

Pentagon Concerned Russia Cultivating Sympathy Among US Troops | Voice of America — EnglishRussian efforts to weaken the West through a relentless campaign of information warfare may be starting to pay off, cracking a key bastion of the U.S. line of defense: the military. While most Ameri…https://tinyurl.com/yx8553kc

For example, the NDS found that support for Russia as an ally went from 19% to 28% last year, but 28% is about the level of support that Gallup found for Russia in February. 5/15

Furthermore, as VOA emphasizes, most of the gains in the National Defense Survey came from a rise in support by Republicans (driven in turn by cues from Trump) rather than a general infection spreading to other voters. 6/15

The bottom line is that Trump and his Republican enablers are in real danger of pushing the embrace or flirtation with Putinism too far. Pushing that envelope would almost certainly backfire with many of the voters Trump needs to be reelected. 7/15

Consequently, there are real dangers to Trump in having his (multiple) acts of obstruction of justice included in the House’s articles of impeachment, and in Michael Horowitz’s finding that Operation Crossfire Hurricane was properly predicated. 8/15

Mueller didn’t have sufficient evidence to charge Trump with engaging in a criminal conspiracy with Russia to win the 2016 election, but Mueller did find overwhelming evidence that the Trump campaign welcomed and in fact encouraged that interference, 9/15

and that Trump then tried on ten different occasions to obstruct the investigations into the details and extent of that interference and collusion (to use a weaker term than “conspiracy,” with its criminal law connotations). 10/15

Trump’s mantra has been “No collusion, no obstruction,” but a Reuters poll in April found that a plurality of voters believe he did collude and that a majority believed that he did obstruct. 11/15

Despite report findings, almost half of Americans think Trump colluded with Russia: Reuters/Ipsos pollNearly half of all Americans still believe President Donald Trump worked with Russia to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted after Special Coun…https://tinyurl.com/yy3wps8g

As for the second:

DOJ IG Horowitz has found that the Russia investigation was not a witch hunt or a politically motivated and unpredicated hoax to take down Trump. 12/15

That is ominous for Trump, because if it was properly predicated, what were Horowitz’s grounds for saying that it was properly predicated?

Well, Mueller gave plenty of reasons in Vol I of his Report, as I reported here

A Reader’s Guide to the Mueller ReportA READER’S GUIDE TO THE MUELLER REPORT Online text of the Muller Report, Vols. I and II by Thomas Wood @twoodiac June 27, 2019 CONTENTS I. A very brief résumé of the Mueller Report, Vols. …https://tinyurl.com/yxphjpq9

13/15

In sum, the linkage between Trump-Ukraine (2019 and 2020) and Trump-Russia (2016) — a linkage that becomes more obvious by the day — and the very well-founded fears that most Americans have of Russia 14/15

present a grave political danger to Trump as the impeachment process Speaker Pelosi has launched against him grinds away. 15/15