Concern that a foreign government actively interfered in our election process is not a partisan issue. At least, it shouldn’t be. It undermines our democracy and deserves our full attention. Even if you supported and voted for Trump, and you’re happy with the outcome of the election, as an American you should be outraged and concerned that Russia appears to have actively influenced our democratic process.
At this point, based on reports from the US intelligence community and the intelligence communities of multiple allies, it seems to be a foregone conclusion that Russia engaged in an active effort to influence the Presidential election. The only reason I can see for trying to pretend that isn’t an issue, or shut down any attempt to investigate is if you are an accomplice and you’re afraid that the investigation will find that out.
At least four top GOP leaders or cabinet members have now been caught lying about interaction with Russia during the campaign. Is it possible that the communications were trivial and did not play any insidious role in the election? Yes. However, if the communications were innocent and there’s nothing to hide, why lie about them in the first place and why fight so hard against both the intelligence community and media efforts to investigate what happened?
Trump and his administration should want to get to the bottom of what happened for two reasons. First, as the leader of the United States and a citizen of this country Trump should do everything he can to determine what Russia did and what impact it may have had, and take any efforts necessary to ensure it doesn’t happen again. Second, as the focus of allegations that he actively worked with Putin and the Russian government, Trump has a vested interest in conducting a comprehensive and transparent investigation to disprove those assertions. Of course, that assumes they’re just rumors and allegations and that the investigation won’t implicate the Trump administration.
The GOP is complicit now in efforts to cover up Russian interference and pretend it didn’t happen. To me, this indicates that the GOP is aware that there was Russian influence on the election and they’re afraid that admitting it will delegitimize their power. It will. But, no more so than actively covering up the obvious. Perhaps they’re actually concerned that there was direct collaboration and cooperation between Russian and the Trump campaign–and possibly Trump himself–which to me makes any effort to avoid a thorough investigation treasonous.
There are always winners and losers in our elections. There will always be some segment of the population that supported the losing candidate and will be disappointed with the results. When the dust settles, though, we are all Americans and we come together and work together as Americans. That’s hard to do when the administration in the White House appears to be a puppet regime of Putin’s Kremlin and the GOP that should provide the checks and balances on its power looks the other way.
