(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



With Trump, Democrats shouldn’t be afraid of the word ‘treason’ [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags']

Date: 2022-08-24

With each passing day, news reports and court filings reveal the depth of Donald Trump’s perfidy:

Hundreds of stolen top-secret documents

A hoard of “sensitive compartmented information”—the nation’s most dangerous and compromising secrets

His personal involvement in combing through documents and obstructing their return to the FBI

By now, everyone understands the chilling stakes at play here, yet media commentators and Democratic politicians seem reluctant to explicitly name the threat Trump poses. For example, on The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell on Tuesday, Rep. Eric Swalwell said this about the documents scandal: “You would also have to assume that he’s also capable of leveraging the deepest U.S. secrets that affect troop protection, national security, our technical collection capabilities—that he would leverage that as well for his own personal gain.”

Those are damning words, to a point, but a pretty elliptical way of saying what he means. Here’s a better way: “America needs an answer to one critical question: Has Donald Trump committed treason or espionage against our country by revealing those documents to a foreign nation?”

Democratic leaders have an admirable bias toward truth-telling and fair play, and they are understandably wary of demagoguery, but that can also mean they avoid emotional, hot-button words and are reluctant to go for the jugular, even when it is perfectly justified.

The meaning of the word treason has been diluted by conservatives in recent decades to the point of triteness. They have thrown it around so flagrantly that it has come to mean “whatever Democrats do that I really, really don’t like.” But with Trump, the question is about real, actual treason. Legally speaking, the U.S. Code, mirroring the Constitution, says that “whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason.” Lawyers (and I am decidedly not one) can debate whether that definition means the U.S. needs to be in an actual shooting war to warrant treason, but in every other moral and ethical sense, for a private citizen to reveal America’s most dangerous secrets to a geopolitical adversary like . . . oh, let’s say Russia, would be unequivocally treasonous. Revealing them to a sketchy “ally,” like Saudi Arabia for example, would be at the very least espionage.

And that is, of course, what we’re talking about here—the ultimate fear that a former U.S. president had the motive, opportunity, and complete lack of conscience to commit actual treason or espionage. But we haven’t heard many mainstream Democrats say those words out loud. Why not? Democrats obviously can’t accuse Trump of those crimes at this point—we just don’t know. But we have every right to ask the question: Has Donald Trump betrayed his country? Those documents were at Mar-a-Lago for a year and a half: What was he even doing with them in the first place? Who did he show them to? What is the possibility that the slimiest, most immoral, sinful, unethical, venal, narcissistic pathological liar ever to hold high office in America—a man drowning in debt who will never get another bank loan as long as he lives—has already tried to monetize or leverage America’s secrets to benefit himself?

Is it likely? We can only hope no. But until we have answers, no Republican candidate—indeed, no patriotic American—should be defending Donald Trump. Democratic candidates can and should demand to know why their opponents still support him when so much is unknown.

Conservatives have no problem using the FBI seizures to stoke white-hot hysteria about “tyranny”; that messaging has to be countered. With so much at stake this election year, Democrats can’t mince words, can’t pull punches, can’t just let the situation play out. It’s OK to use hot-button words in this situation: betrayal, treachery, espionage, treason.

America has a hundred reasons to worry that a former president may have sold out his country. Did he or didn’t he? Let’s make that a national conversation.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/8/24/2118603/-With-Trump-Democrats-shouldn-t-be-afraid-of-the-word-treason

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/