Tag: Vladimir Putin

TRUMP OUTSHINES RUSSIAN TROLLS AT DECEIVING AND DIVIDING

Russia’s byzantine efforts to infect American politics with chronic misinformation and rampant discord may be about to end. And we have none other than Donald J. Trump to thank. With a president so deeply skilled at dividing people and turning truth on its head, there is no need to subcontract that work to the Russians. Who needs an elaborate Russian troll farm to crank out social media posts about the evil of black protesters and invading brown immigrants, when Trump can do it himself with the flick of his Twitter finger or the roar of his bully pulpit?

Remember those 13 Russians charged with clandestinely promoting Trump’s 2016 candidacy? They were accused of stirring the social media pot with totally fabricated posts touching on racist and xenophobic fears. The February indictment says their goal was to “sow discord in the U.S. political system. . .through information warfare (designed) to spread distrust towards the other candidates and the political system in general.” Well, the Donald has shown he can do all of that on his own. He was an excellent student of his Russian mentors, so much so that he no longer needs foreign aid.

Yale historian Timothy Snyder has written extensively about how the Russians pioneered the whole concept of “fake news” in the 1990s and 2000s. In his book, The Road to Unfreedom, Snyder explains that Vladimir Putin’s post-Cold War strategy was to make up for the regime’s lack of economic and technological power by flooding the Internet and television with misinformation and demonizing the institutions charged with uncovering facts, “and then exploit the confusion that results.” Wrote Snyder: “They cultivate enough chaos so people become cynical about public life and, eventually, about truth itself.” Then, in the 2010s, Snyder notes, Putin took that successful formula on the road in an effort to destabilize Western democracies. Low and behold, there was Donald Trump, ascending the golden escalator to launch a presidential campaign based on division and fabrication. It was a marriage made in Moscow.

One of the many examples of Russian skullduggery cited by the Mueller investigation involved an authentic photo of a Latino woman and her child holding a sign that said, “No Human Being is Illegal”. According to the indictment, the Russians digitally altered the sign to read, “GIVE ME MORE FREE SHIT” and plastered it on social media. Flash forward to the recent release by the White House of a doctored video that made it falsely appear that CNN’s Jim Acosta had aggressively grabbed the arm of a press aide. No need for foreign subterfuge when you can do it yourself.

In that same Russian indictment, a Kremlin operative was accused of circulating a fake news item under the heading of, “Hillary Clinton has Already Committed Voter Fraud during the Democrat Iowa Caucus.” As Snyder noted, the heart of the Russian game plan is not about ideology, it’s about getting people to accept that “there’s no reason to believe in anything. There is no truth. Your institutions are bogus.” But you hardly need a Russian troll farm to sow those seeds, when the president of the United States accuses the Democrats of voter fraud in Florida, Georgia and Arizona, the second he realizes his candidates might not win.

Most of the fabricated posts cited in the Russian indictment involved race, immigration and religion, obviously visceral hot-button issues that trigger deep divisions. They contained outrageous lies and threats about Black Lives Matter taking over major cities, Muslim terrorists hiding behind burkas and illegal immigrants destroying American communities. In other words, pretty much the same game plan Trump trotted out for the midterms. The only difference is that presidential pronouncements enjoy a wider circulation and carry more weight than Facebook posts. Based on Trump’s campaign rally speeches and his Twitter feed, Americans were alerted daily to the presidential fiction of a pending invasion of killer immigrants and middle east terrorists approaching the U.S. border. He totally outdid his Russian counterparts on this one by ordering the military to protect us from the fabricated attack.

For a president who celebrated his inauguration by lying about the size of the crowd, it’s hardly news that Donald Trump enjoys a perverse relationship with the truth. But he’s really outdone himself lately. He told one campaign rally that Democrats will give illegal immigrants free cars just for sneaking into the country. At another one, he berated Democrats for ignoring the health needs of veterans and boasted about how he got Congress to pass a bill allowing vets to use their own doctors if the VA wait time was too long. Only problem was that the bill he was talking about was passed in 2014 and signed by Obama. On the night that Democrats won a majority in the House, flipped seven governorships and eight state legislative chambers, Trump called the results “close to complete victory”. When his latest choice for attorney general drew fire, Trump absurdly insisted that he doesn’t even know the guy.

This behavior would be amusing if it came from a crazy oddball uncle, something to chuckle about on the way home from family gatherings. But this crazy uncle is our president, and he is using the Russian playbook to, as Snyder, the historian, calls it, “create chaos from inside” by making a mockery of truth and denigrating the instruments of democracy. For the Russians, such an outcome weakens their main adversary. For Trump, it’s just a way to get through another day. For the rest of us, it’s another reason to keep searching for an exit from this nightmare. Without truth, without faith in our democratic institutions, America’s greatness is as phony as Trump’s invasion from Central America.

THE UNRAVELING OF AN UNHINGED PRESIDENT

Say what you want about Donald Trump, keeping in mind that it matters dearly to him. In fact, it may be the only thing that does matter to this president. The Donald traverses a relational line that is, at once, simple and binary. It goes from commendation to condemnation, from singing praise to a dirge of denouncement. There is nothing in between and directions are often quickly reversed. So too are the presidential rewards and penances that accompany those changes. Just ask Omarosa Manigault Newman and John Brennan, names you would never expect to appear in the same sentence.

Omarosa, as she is now mononymously known, has owned the news cycle for the past week on the basis of her aptly named memoire, “Unhinged”. In it, she takes a verbal machete – along with a tape recorder – to the president who gave her a high level White House job, a position that consisted mainly of saying nice things about him. Omarosa, a former reality tv star, started writing her tell-all shortly after she was booted from the administration last December. Why was she hired in the first place? As Trump tweeted, “She was vicious but not smart. . .but (she said) such wonderful and powerful things about me. . .until she got fired.” (Here and here.) The president, who once heaped effusive praise on his mentee, quickly reversed course, calling her “whacky”, a “lowlife” and a “dog”.

Former CIA director Brennan has only known one of Trump’s polarities; they have only spoke ill of each other. In the ring of alpha male one-upmanship, being leader of the free world has its perks, and the president used them last week to punish Brennan’s criticism by withdrawing his top security clearance. Trump was so thrilled with this new toy he’s made a long list of other current and former intelligence types he wants to use it on. And that, in turn, has alarmed serious policy wonks who see the president’s rush to silence critics as another giant step toward authoritarianism.

That may well be, but it’s also, in the nauseating expression of his sycophants, “Trump being Trump”. The Donald has always had his own ridiculously simplified version of the Myers & Briggs personality assessment. People who praise him are “amazing”, “tremendous”, “terrific”, “incredible”, “tough” and “smart”. Those who criticize him are “weak,” “crooked”, “low energy”, “phony”, “pathetic” and “low IQ”. Or, as in the case of Rosie O’Donnell back in 1996, a “disgusting slob with a fat, ugly face”.

Donald Trump is the same vicious, emotionally crippled narcissist he always has been, wholly unable to situationally modify his behavior based on circumstances. The only thing that has changed is the amount of power he wields. And that’s what makes him so very dangerous.

A recent story line, one which Congressional Republicans are refusing to touch out of understandable disgust and embarrassment, is that Trump shows his blatant racism by calling his black critics unintelligent. He’s labeled Rep. Maxine Waters as “low IQ” seven times this year alone. He recently called LeBron James and CNN’s Don Lemon “dumb” or “stupid”. He used similar pejoratives on Omarosa, the only high-ranking African American on his staff prior to her discharge.

In a moment resembling a Saturday Night Live sketch, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders defended her boss against racism charges by noting that he has also called a number of white people stupid. To carry this absurdity even further, the Washington Post produced a graphic tracking Trump’s insults of stupidity by race. The upshot was that he used that label mostly for white Republicans during the primaries, then targeted white Democrats during the general election, but has mostly aimed his low-intelligence barbs at blacks since taking office. They never covered this metric of investigative reporting back when I went to journalism school.

There is but one constant when it comes to Trump’s word choices. It matters only whether he has been praised or criticized. For example, he once said of Germany’s Angela Merkel, shortly after she treated him nicely, that she is “a really great leader; I was always a Merkel person.” Then the chancellor took exception with something Trump said, drawing this response from him: “The German people are going to end up overthrowing this woman.”

He called foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos an “excellent guy”. That was before Papadopoulos reached a plea deal in the Mueller investigation and drew this Trump tweet: “Few people knew the young, low level volunteer named George who has already proven to be a liar.”

Before former Texas governor Rick Perry started complimenting Trump, the president had condemned him with tweets: “should be forced to take an IQ test”, “should be ashamed of himself”, “failed on the border”, and “doesn’t understand what the word demagoguery means”. Once Perry offered praise for Trump, he was given a cabinet position by the president who heaped several paragraphs of syrupy praise on him.

When Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, one of Trump’s 2016 primary opponents publicly supported the president on a couple of pieces of legislation, he was rewarded with these Trumpian words at a Florida rally: “I want to express our deep gratitude to a man who has really become a friend of mine. He is tough. Man, he is tough, and he is good, and he loves you”. That was quite a change from calling Rubio a “lightweight” in 21 tweets, in addition to those that said the senator was “dishonest”, “a joke”, a “phony”, “scamming Florida”, “bought and paid for by lobbyists”, has the “worst voting record in the U.S. Senate”, and “truly doesn’t have a clue”.

Words mean absolutely nothing to Donald Trump. They are mere pieces of a bizarre Rorschach test, measuring his friend-or-foe assessment of the moment. There is nothing remotely relational about them. It’s all transactional. He thinks Vladimir Putin once said he was “brilliant, a genius”. That was actually a mistranslation. Putin’s terminology was closer to “colorful”. But it was enough to shape Trump’s mind-boggling pro-Russian foreign policy. The Kremlin hardly needs blackmail to curry favor when sweet nothings work so well.

This would all be amusing if the fate of our country, perhaps the world, were not at stake. We don’t need Omarosa’s book or tapes to know that our president is unhinged. All we have to do is read his tweets and listen to his rants. And then pray that this out-of-control reality show is canceled before our democracy is totally destroyed.

SCORING HELSINKI: DEEP STATE 1, TRUMP 0

We now have four, not three, branches of government: legislative, judicial, executive and, last – and most assuredly least – Donald-I-Alone-Can-Fix-It-Trump. Yes, our Constitution places the president in the executive branch. The Donald, however, disregards all instruction manuals and briefing memos, preferring to roll instead as his own unattached entity, a government of himself, by himself and for himself.

This unique bifurcation had been in the works since Inauguration Day, but reached full gestation in Helsinki last week when Trump pulled away from his own administration in a nauseating, groveling embrace of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. The president not only rejected his advisors’ advice against having such a meeting with Putin, but he was sharply critical of his own government’s findings that the Russian leader had ordered an attack on our country’s elections.

As a result, the “Deep State” that Trump so vigorously campaigned against moved quickly and decisively to right the sinking ship of state. Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats, a Trump appointee, issued a statement contradicting the president’s remarks that let Russia off the hook for its election interference. Later that week, FBI Director Christopher Wray, the guy Trump appointed after he fired James Comey, pushed back on the president’s claim that the Mueller investigation is a “witch hunt”, insisting that “Russia attempted to intervene with the last election, and . . . continues to engage in malign influence operations to this day.”

So much happens so quickly these days, it is difficult to sit back and take measure, to process what is happening to our country. It is virtually unheard of for high level presidential appointees to publicly disagree with the president. But it gets even more bizarre than that. More than a week has passed since Trump and Putin spent two hours talking to each other with only themselves and their interpreters in the room. Russia has alluded to agreements reached in that meeting, but nobody in our intelligence agencies knows what they are because Trump hasn’t told them. As a result, both the New York Times and Politico have reported that U.S. spies are attempting to tap into Russian intelligence in order to learn what the President of the United States said in that meeting. No reputable publisher would ever accept a spy thriller manuscript with that story line. It’s beyond belief.

If there is a silver lining in this absurdity, it resides in the Deep State. The term loosely refers to knowledgeable government professionals who keep the country running, apart from – and sometimes in spite of – elected leaders. At various times, the Deep State has been scorned by the left and the right. In the 1960s, it was known as the “Industrial Military Complex”, and was deeply eschewed by those protesting the Vietnam War. Decades later, Edward Snowden attributed secret surveillance of U.S. citizens to the inertia of the Deep State. On the other end of the spectrum, the predicate for making America great again was the abolition of the Deep State, which the Trump campaign saw as a swamp in need of draining.

Ideology aside, the Deep State, like most governments, is neither monolithic nor inherently good or evil. It all depends on how it is used. Under our current circumstances, it has proven to be an effective safety net against the autocratic ravages of an unfit president, a “sad, embarrassing wreck of a man,” in the words of conservative columnist George Will. So loudly, confidently and unanimously was the Deep State’s repudiation of Trump’s Helsinki performance that Trump was forced to offer a rare, if lame, correction, allowing that Russia may have interfered with our election, but it “. . . could have been other people also. There’s a lot of people out there.”

While the Helsinki summit was the most dramatic presentation of the divide between Trump and the rest of the executive branch, it was by no means the first. Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson went on Fox News immediately after the neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville to say that Trump “speaks for himself” on his values, and that the State Department remains committed to “equal treatment of people the world over.”

Minutes after the president disparaged NATO allies at the recent Brussels conference, even questioning whether the United States should continue to participate, current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared on Twitter that “NATO is the most successful alliance in history”. According to news reports, Defense Secretary James Mattis deliberately kept a low profile during the NATO meeting and Trump’s European tour to better position himself to help repair the damage later.

Nowhere is the divide between the president and the rest of the executive branch more pronounced than in North Korea. Trump was in an euphoric glow after his smoke-and-mirrors spectacular in Singapore, insisting that nuclear peace is now in hand, thanks to his diplomatic powwow with Kim Jong-un. Pompeo, and the other deep-staters, do not expect the regime to give up their nukes easily, and see nothing but a long slog ahead, as has always been the case with North Korea.

Federal bureaucrats have long been fodder for punchlines. They symbolize what cynics see as a bloated and broken government. And they have a point, particularly when a Social Security deposit is late, or FEMA botches a hurricane recovery, or the SEC fails to stop a Bernie Madoff scheme. Yet, this Deep State also includes bureaucrats who have caught and removed defective medications, recalled dangerous motor vehicles and discovered major breakthroughs in fighting deadly diseases. It includes at least 69 Nobel Prize winners, mostly little known scientists.

Federal servants are bound by a code of loyalty that is very different than the one Trump attempted to extract from James Comey. They pledge “loyalty to country above loyalty to persons, party or government department”. That some cabinet secretaries and intelligence personnel have adhered to that oath and chosen to follow the facts, rather than an unhinged, fact-free president, is an amazing show of patriotism. Long live the Deep State.

THE WHITE HOUSE HELL WEEK THAT DOESN’T END

Even in a four month presidency that made Alice’s rabbit hole adventures look normal, last week was extraordinarily bizarre. The entire White House staff now understands what it was like in 1969 for those Woodstock revelers who ignored the warnings about the brown blotter acid.

Any other week, Vladimir Putin’s offer to share with Congress state secrets gleaned in an Oval Office meeting would have been hot, above-the-fold, front page news. But not last week. There was way too much competition. It started with the revelation that Trump disclosed highly confidential intelligence while showing off to Russian envoys. Then came the report that the Donald attempted to pull the FBI off its investigation of his former national security advisor, followed by a scoop about 18 undisclosed contacts between the Trump campaign and the Russians.

By week’s end, we were reading about the appointment of a special prosecutor, a possible subpoena for a “person of interest” in the top echelon of the White House, and my personal favorite: Trump telling his Russian visitors that he fired the FBI director because he was “a real nut job”. Depending on the interpreter’s adeptness with pronouns, the Russian officials may have left the Oval Office a tad confused over who the nut job was, the president or the fired FBI guy. Alas, it didn’t really matter. In the context of last week’s totality, they, like the rest of us, were quite capable of figuring it out for themselves.

To quote a favorite cliché of Washington speech writers, “Make no mistake about it.” Last week was some kind of turning point for this country’s 45th president. The New York Times Roger Cohen: “All this is right out of Despotism 101.” The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent: “Trump’s conduct further devolves into truly unhinged autocratic madness.” Conservative blogger Erick Erickson: “The sad reality is that the greatest defense of the president available at this point is one his team could never give on the record: He is an idiot who does not know any better.”

After such a dystopian week, it’s easy to fixate on the darkness, finding sweet solace only in thoughts of an impending impeachment. To that I offer two notes, one of caution and the other, oddly, of guarded optimism.

Here’s the caution part: Yes, the White House staff is pulling out the procedural files on impeachment. Most media outlets are running thumb-suckers on the subject. Still, it would be unwise to plan any Trump farewell parties just yet. Donald Trump does not possess the propensity to go gentle into Dylan Thomas’ good night. Most of us counted him out at least a dozen times before the election. His base is still chugging the Kool Aid. More importantly, Republicans control both houses of Congress. They may be disgusted and disheartened by Trump. They may even privately accept that he is brain dead. But they won’t take him off life support until they are certain such a move serves their political interests. Besides, impeachment hardly takes us out of dystopia. It merely gives us Mike Pence, a functioning-but-rabid right winger who has never met a human right he likes (here, here and here).

As for optimism, as guarded as it may be, the architecture of our 241-year-old democracy has so far succeeded admirably in restraining a severe assault from the first authoritarian strongman to hold the presidency. Trump’s election pumped new life into a long forgotten novel by Sinclair Lewis, “It Can’t Happen Here.” Written in 1935, as fascism was slowly taking its hold in Europe, Lewis wanted to wake up sanguine Americans to the realization that they were not immune to such a totalitarian takeover. Against the backdrop of a populist uprising called the “Forgotten Men,” Lewis’s antagonist, Berzelius Windrip, was elected president, largely on the Trump-like premise that he, alone, could solve the problems of the forgotten. Once in office, Windrip made three immediate moves that would have left Trump drooling. He strong-armed Congress into turning all decision-making power over to the president. Then he abolished the courts. Finally, he imprisoned reporters who wrote bad things about him.

Trump would trade Mar a Largo for that kind of power. As it stands, the Art of the Deal president hasn’t gotten one substantive bill through Congress. He has repeatedly railed at all the judges who have dared to block his travel ban and other executive orders. Among the morass of last week’s news stories was the revelation that Trump told the former FBI director that he wants to put journalists in jail. He has had one bromance after another with foreign authoritarian despots who have jailed or killed anyone who dared get in their way, including Russia’s Putin, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, and the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte.

Thanks to our constitutional underpinnings, Donald Trump is only a wannabe dictator. Last week’s crazy chain of events showed that the system is working. As much as he’d like the Russian influence investigation to go away, it’s here to stay, complete with grand jury and subpoena powers. As much as he’d like to take over Congress, there are 535 ego-driven members there worrying much more about their reelections than his. And despite his fantasy of locking up reporters, Trump’s antics have fueled a revival in journalism that defies the business models of the struggling news outlets that employ them.

Although it is always reassuring to get even part way through a hurricane without the roof caving in, this storm is by no means over. Let us remain ever vigilant until the all-clear signal is given. Sinclair Lewis was right: it can happen here. We need to do everything possible to see that it doesn’t.

WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE OVER RUSSIA’S THEFT OF OUR ELECTION?

The biggest guessing game in Washington right now is what it will take for the Democrats to throw a major league temper tantrum over the antics of the incoming administration. How about a conclusion by the CIA and FBI that Russian espionage helped elect Donald Trump? Wait, that actually happened, didn’t it? It was easy to miss because the reaction from the loyal opposition was more of a whimper than a wail.

House Democratic leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., normally no shrinking violet when it comes to pitched rhetoric, responded to the bombshell with these uncharacteristically modulated sentences: “This is not (about) overturning this election. This is about making sure it doesn’t happen again.”

In the Senate, incoming Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, said the unanimous consensus by the country’s top intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the election to help Trump win was “simultaneously stunning and not surprising.” He and Pelosi then pushed for a bipartisan congressional investigation. Watergate and 9/11 eventually had their investigations, but they were preceded by well-deserved rhetorical flourishes aimed at setting a moral tone for the country.

Obviously, such an inquiry is necessary. But from the standpoint of leveraging power and public opinion in dealing with Team Trump, particularly as a minority party, it is far from sufficient. I’ve never been an advocate of frivolously jumping into battles. Anger is not a strategy, but used sparingly and selectively, it can be an effective tactic, particularly when laced with a dose or two of righteous indignation. Given the enormity of evil associated with Russian spies pressing their fingers on the scales of our democracy, it’s hard to think of a better time to let loose with that tactic. As Rabbi Hillel so wisely and rhetorically asked, “If not now, when?”

Now is the time for Democratic leaders to fan out to the networks and cable shows, talking points in hand. Now is the time for them to scream from the rooftops about an election that was stolen from the American people. Now is the time to avoid mincing words. It’s time to call Donald Trump out as Vladimir Putin’s puppet, the candidate backed by the Kremlin’s finest chicanery. Now is the time to take to the streets, not because we don’t like Donald Trump, but because his election was rigged by the Russians and, therefore lacks legitimacy.

One of the first things I learned as a union negotiator is that if your side is suffering a power deficit, as ours always did, you have to find a way to create power. Right now, through a confluence of circumstances, Democrats, who are sorely lacking in political power, have an opportunity to gain leverage. But they have to rise above their post-election shell shock and timidity. Russian spies helped elect Donald Trump, for God’s sake. Why tiptoe around it? If nothing else, a strong offense could pull Trump off his transition game, sending him into late night Twitter defense, a play that brings a cringe to even his most ardent supporters. Better yet, it could build enough steam for the Senate to torpedo the confirmation of Putin’s buddy, Rex Tillerson for Secretary of State.

There is power in the moral high ground. It captures peoples’ hearts and minds, rallying them to a noble cause. No, it is not likely to stop a Trump presidency. But it can alter the narrative. And as we learned from this election, the right narrative delivers power. Instead of the outsider riding into Washington on his white horse to shake everything up, we can make it about Russian skullduggery producing a U.S. president who had 2.8 million fewer votes than Putin’s nemesis, Hillary Clinton. To those who say, “Get over it. Trump won; he is our president,” a reminder is in order. Barack Obama won in 2008 and 2012, by much wider electoral vote margins and without interference from a foreign adversary. Yet, the legitimacy of his presidency was challenged by Republicans from Day 1, all on the basis of utter balderdash. Every blatantly false claim imaginable – from being a Muslim to his birth in Kenya – was used to challenge the authenticity of the country’s first black president.

Although despicable, the Republican strategy was effective. It weakened his administration, particularly in the early years. Democrats may be hesitant to follow that path because it left such a stench in the political atmosphere. But there is one huge difference between then and now, namely a genuine, real life, honest-to-God basis to challenge the legitimacy of the 45th president.

FBI Director James Comey, a Republican and obviously no friend of Hillary Clinton, today joined the CIA and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper in declaring that Russia’s interference in the election was done to help Trump win. Couple those findings with Putin’s autocratic history as a dictator who has had his political opponents imprisoned and murdered, and you have a compellingly strong basis upon which to challenge the legitimacy of this president.

Unfortunately, the Democratic response has been limited to meekly calling for an investigation, as if we were dealing with some sort of bureaucratic screw up, as opposed to one of the most extraordinary events in our political history. The party’s leaders are understandably in a bit of post-election disarray right now. For the sake of the country, they need to quickly get past it. And then work up some passionate outrage over Russia’s theft of our election.

TRUMP DROPS A DIME ON CHRISTIE TO PROTECT THE RUSSIANS

In trying to defend the Russians against accusations of hacking the Democrats’ emails, Donald Trump first suggested that the culprit could be a 400-pound guy “sitting on his bed.” Now he says it might have “been a guy in New Jersey.” Put the clues together, people. Trump is clearly fingering Chris Christie. There just aren’t that many 400-pound New Jersey Republicans with a propensity for dirty tricks. (See Bridgegate.)

Pity the poor governor from the Garden State. Once the GOP’s king of the hill, before being vanquished by the president-elect, Christie spent all fall clinging to Trump like a hostage to his captor. He was rewarded for his blind subservience by the then-dubious distinction of heading up Trump’s transition team. Of course that was back when not even The Donald thought he would ever have anything to actually transition to. Within days of his unanticipated victory, Christie was summarily transitioned out. He has now been reduced to playing Trump’s imaginary foil in his unwavering and unnerving defense of Vladimir Putin. Poor Chris Christie. He was, for one brief shining moment, a credible presidential candidate. Now, to Trump, he’s a just a fat guy sitting on his bed in New Jersey, tying up bridge traffic and hacking John Podesta’s emails.

Fantasy? Sure, but it’s not all that far outside the realm of our new normal. Is it just me, or does our new normal really resemble a bad dream sequence, or maybe an old “Twilight Zone” episode? The first half of the weekend was devoted to an esoteric battle between the CIA and the FBI over whether Russia interfered with our presidential election in order to help Trump win or just to mess with us. The second half was filled with Trump defending the Putin crowd from any wrongdoing and preparing to nominate as secretary of state an oil company executive with close ties to Russia.

I keep having flashbacks to my elementary school years. At precisely 1 p.m. central time on the first Wednesday of every month, an air raid siren went off and we had to crawl under our desks until it stopped. This was how we prepared for a Russian attack. It was traumatic for me. I was too big to fit under my desk, so I sort of curled up next to it, certain that I would be the first to die when the bombs started dropping. Fast forward 60 years: these sneaky Russians have moved on from bombing elementary schools to screwing with our elections.

I get the fact that the cold war is over, but Putin’s regime has been a stubbornly unpleasant thorn in our side for years. The Washington Post’s incredible reporting Friday that the CIA has evidence of Russia’s interference in our presidential election was blockbuster stuff. It was almost enough for me to crawl under my desk. I could fit there now but am way too old and arthritic to get up again.

There was a time, not all that long ago, when credible reports of Russian election tampering would have triggered a strong, swift bipartisan response on the part of our country’s political players. And the Republicans would have been out front banging the war drums. Yet it took Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell more than 48 hours to issue this remarkably tepid statement: “The Russians are not our friends.” His initial reaction to the Post’s report was to express doubt over the accuracy of the CIA’s findings, echoing with subdued language the more verbosely articulated sentiment of President-elect Trump who called the claim of Russian interference “ridiculous.” By this morning, however, McConnell reversed course and supported the call for a congressional investigation.

Of course, long-time Republican Russian critics like Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham were not swayed by Trump’s affinity for Putin. Both were quick to criticize Russian interference and call for a thorough investigation. Neocon hawk and former UN Ambassador John Bolton would have ordinarily joined that chorus. However, he is now looking for a top state department job in the new administration. He told Fox News that he thinks the Russian election flap may be a “false flag” planted by the Obama Administration in order to rile the Russians. That motion appeared to die for lack of a second.

That pretty much leaves Trump and his hangers-on sticking with the Russia-can-do-no-evil position. Putin is one of the few players on the world stage never to get so much as a vindictive late night tweet from the incoming president. Trump is fond of recalling how Putin once described him as brilliant. If that’s all it takes to influence this administration, O.J. Simpson should get himself a thesaurus of superlatives and a pardon application. And when he’s done, he should pass them both on to poor old Chris Christie.