The Real Trump

Before getting on with this post, let me remind you of this:

"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort."

And with that gotten over, on we go.

Donald Trump this week unceremoniously dumped campaign manager Paul Manafort, not because he is a loathsome pig (they both are) but solely because Trump saw that Manafort had become a liability to his Presidential campaign.  Nothing else about Manafort bothered Trump in the least, including Manafort's having been paid millions by the Putin government.

And what was that money handed over for?  Well, this, for instance:

"Lt. Colonel Tom Doman’s introduction to Ukraine, at 4 a.m. on May 27, 2006, was not a warm one.

“We had rocks thrown at us. Rocks hit Marines. Buses were rocked back and forth. We were just trying to get to our base.”

Doman and his 112 reserve Marines and sailors were boarding the buses after dark, with backup from Ukrainian special forces, to get to a compound where they would lay the groundwork for Sea Breeze 2006, a larger international training exercise set to involve 3,500 troops from the U.S., Ukraine, and 12 NATO partner countries. But hundreds of protesters seemed to have come out of nowhere to confront them.

The Marines ended up hemmed in by angry locals in Feodosia, a Ukrainian resort city on the Black Sea. “We had people jeering us and protesting against us until we basically left the country,” Doman says. The Americans couldn’t go outside; they couldn’t reach their supply ship in the town’s port. Some protesters wielded what Col. Bill Black, the Marines’ commanding officer, jokingly called “Ukrainian cocktails” — plastic bottles filled with diesel fuel.

A decade later, the aborted exercise is arousing new interest: American diplomatic cables and Ukrainian prosecutors say the anti-US, anti-NATO protests that threatened these Marines were largely partisan plants, organized by politicians who consulted with Paul Manafort, now the prominent campaign aide to presidential candidate Donald Trump."

The Marines were eventually forced to leave the country, their mission incomplete, for fear of setting off an international incident.

And in case you have forgotten already, let me repeat this:

"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort."

The Republicans throw the word treason around against every Democrat, so often that it has largely become a meaningless taunt to most people.  But here it is, folks, the real thing- literal, Constitutionally defined treason in its most blatant form; the actual incitement of violence against U.S. troops, to the benefit of a hostile country, and all done for cash.

So Manafort got caught and now Trump is endeavoring to wash the stain away.  But the truth remains: Trump is a traitor and the willing employer of traitors, and a large part of the electorate is just fine with that.  It's hard to find, given this fact, a shred of the country that we are supposed to respect.