A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

© 2019 Scribner and The Washington Post On Quora, Trump supporter Jeff Blake asks this insincere question:  When will the left finally realize who really colluded with foreign countries to influence the 2016 presidential election? My reply:  News flash, sweet summer child: The “left,” the “center,” and the sane, honest members of the “right” are painfully aware that it was the Republican Party and - especially - the Trump campaign team who colluded with the Russians to influence the 2016 general election. It’s only most of the “right,” particularly the die-hard core of Trump supporters and the craven leadership of the GOP, that constantly bangs on the “No collusion, no obstruction” drum. The Red Cap Brigade uses several tactics to gaslight the public and hide the modern-day Republican Party’s cozy relations with the Russians. They range from outright denial (“Russia did not intervene in the 2016 election at all.”) to clever deflection (“Russia  did...

During the past two months, Donald J. Trump and his various spokespeople (Sean Spicer and Kellyanne Conway being the chief mouthpieces of the Administration) have stated that no one in the Administration has any links to Russia or its kleptocratic leader, Vladimir Putin. And, despite evidence to the contrary, they insist that there is no hint that Russian hackers with connections to Russia's military intelligence agencies planted "fake news" in U.S. social media sites and tried to sway the election in Mr. Trump's favor.  In one of Mr. Trump's rare Presidential press conferences back in February, he repeated this claim even after he had to accept then-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn for allegedly misleading Vice President Mike Pence about his pre-election contacts with Russia's ambassador to the U.S.  According to a February 16 report on NPR.org  (National Public Radio's website), Mr. Trump vehemently denied any link between his camp...

As the White House, the Pentagon and the various intelligence-gathering agencies of the United States focus their attention on such threats as Al Qaeda and other Islamic jihadist groups, the rise of China as an emerging Asian superpower, the growing instability in the Middle East as a result of last year’s Arab Spring popular revolts and Russia’s apparent turn toward autocratic rule by Vladimir Putin, it is important to remain vigilant to national security threats from within the Western Hemisphere. Even as President Barack Obama’s national security team seeks to reduce the U.S. military’s presence in Afghanistan after more than a decade of fighting the extremist Islamic group known as the Taliban – a struggle complicated by Pakistan’s less-than-enthusiastic attitudes toward U.S. objectives in the region – and American defense budgets undergo cutbacks, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and other left-leaning Latin American leaders are forging alliances with Iran and other anti-American...