Pay close attention: The stakes are high in our country
First, let’s stipulate: Our nation absorbed so many shocks that have come so rapidly in recent weeks that what’s seemed real a few days ago may have been upended by developments even since this was written. But some serious questions are now raised, which, acknowledging President Trump’s lawful election, deserve serious consideration.
I quote here from the New York Times, so if you are an NYT hater or have your own contrary “alternate” facts from resources superior to the NYT’s you may be excused now. It has reported: “…members of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election…” Oh, maybe they just talked the weather and movies?
Trump denied awareness of such conversations the NYT had reported Feb. 15 in a Feb. 16 news conference, but had this very denial altered by a statement on Feb. 17! We know, too, now, how much time lapsed from Trump’s being told of then-National Security Adviser Flynn’s lie about his conversing with the Russian ambassador about President Obama’s sanctions against Russia until Trump’s silence on it was undone by other parties. Lacking that goading, it appears Trump may have kept Flynn’s lie buried, with the American public never knowing the truth, as in the meantime the vice president was callously made an unwitting stooge to solemnly repeat the lie on national television.
These aren’t run-of-the-mill political matters. They are very serious national concerns deserving no less than fulsome investigations, including a major, truly bipartisan one — and likely an independent special prosecutor. If a group of intransigent Republican Trump enablers and fellow travelers block such valid inquiries, the raging national dialogue that now engulfs the electorate will almost surely extend our understandable civic mistrust.
Lest anyone in this time of trial feel criticism of the now-president unpatriotic, weigh this wisdom of our 26th president, Theodore Roosevelt: “To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
Sudbury is a resident of El Prado.
