President Donald Trump must resign.
This is not a matter of whether he personally did or did not commit a punishable crime. This is a matter of a president being hopelessly compromised because his own longstanding and weird advocacy of Russian interests, in combination with the now irrefutable proof that his closest family members and campaign chief deliberately took a meeting advertised as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump,” and in combination with Trump firing an FBI director specifically (in Trump’s own words) because Trump was upset with the director’s conduct of the Russia probe.
This is a president whose conduct vis-a-vis the single most dangerous nation (in terms of nuclear weapons capability plus hostility toward American interests around the globe) will now be forever under a cloud. The American people absolutely cannot trust Trump’s objectivity about Russian intentions and Russian actions.
This is an utterly untenable situation. For the good of the country, Trump must lance the boil, and resign.
Let us review the emails released this morning by Donald Trump Jr.
From Goldstone:
The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father. This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump….
Reply from Trump Jr
Thanks Rob I appreciate that…. If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer. Could we do a call first thing next week…?
Later in the chain… snippets… Let me track him down in Moscow….a meeting with the Russian government attorney who is flying over from Moscow….
It doesn’t matter what ended up coming from the meeting. Trump Jr accepted the meeting under the impression that this was a “Russian government attorney” working as part of the “Russian government’s” attempt to help his father’s campaign. This was precisely at a time when the Trump campaign already had been coming under public attack for the elder Trump’s repeated defenses of Vladimir Putin and when rumors already were flying all over the place about “Russia-Trump connections.”
And this is from a family which for 30 years had sought business in Russia and which at least since 2008 had, according to Trump Jr., been in a situation in which “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets.” And that’s just a sampling of the strange and longstanding Trump dealings with shady Russian interests.
To repeat: The entire Trump camp is hopelessly compromised vis-a-vis Russia, at the very least in terms of the ability to engender public trust. This is bad for the country.
Trump must resign. Trump must resign. Trump must resign.
Note: A longer version of this piece, with a much fuller explanation of why Trump should resign for the good of the country, ran here at PJ Media.
This original, shorter version was posted for the first time on July 11, about 1:30 p.m.
