A National Necessity

On the Right, support for Donald Trump is beginning to falter. When news of Junior's emails surfaced, David French penned an op-ed in The National Review. What matters, French wrote, is that Junior tried to collude with the Russians:

Let’s define our terms. The word “collusion” doesn’t have precise legal meaning. It’s largely a political term that refers to claims and allegations that the Trump team worked in some way with Russians as part of the alleged Russian effort to elect Trump. In other words, to claim that Trump officials colluded with Russians is not the same thing as claiming that they violated the law. As with many political operations, including dealings with foreign governments, their actions can be unsavory without being illegal.

That fact, however, in no way makes the attempt any less problematic:

To repeat, it now looks as if the senior campaign team of a major-party presidential candidate intended to meet with an official representative of a hostile foreign power to facilitate that foreign power’s attempt to influence an American election. Russian collusion claims are no longer the exclusive province of tinfoil-hat conspiracy theorists. No American — Democrat or Republican — should defend the expressed intent of this meeting.

The fact that there are Republicans who are still trying to parse the meeting -- Trump himself says that "Most people would have taken that meeting." -- tells you just how feckless the Republican Party has become. French warns his readers that:

As of now, we should have zero confidence that we know all or even most material facts. We should have zero confidence that Trump’s frustration is entirely due to his feeling like an innocent man caught in the crosshairs of crazed conspiracy theorists. It now appears that his son, son-in-law, and campaign chair met with a lawyer who they were told was part of an official Russian government effort to impact the presidential election. The Russian investigation isn’t a witch hunt anymore, if it ever was. It’s a national necessity.

Forget the wall between the United States and Mexico. The wall between the United States and Trump is beginning to crumble. 

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