From article: Trump has sacrificed the high ground
at home as well as abroad. He engages in blatant
self-dealing — conditioning aid to Ukraine on political help for
himself, operating hotels where foreign emissaries stay, paying off a mistress
in violation of campaign finance laws, obstructing justice, etc. — and claims
immunity from any consequences. His lawyer argues that
Trump couldn’t be prosecuted even for shooting someone. This allows Putin to
say: You think I’m bad? Everyone’s corrupt. Look at the United States.
Trump is further normalizing Putin by emulating
the Russian leader’s strongman tactics. He calls opponents “human scum” and the
media “the enemy of the people” while launching an investigation of the
investigators who dared to probe his links with Russia. Trump is also helping
Russia by denigrating the FBI, CIA, and even his own ambassador to Ukraine and
one of his own National Security Council staff members as agents of a
nonexistent “Deep State.” He is thereby undermining the individuals and
institutions most dedicated to combating Russian designs. The leading Russian
hard-liners — Fiona Hill and John Bolton — have already left the White
House, no doubt to Putin’s delight.
“Russia likes seeing President Trump in
the White House in part because it provides the Kremlin a chance to point to
the ugly side of American politics — to say, just as they did with [President
Richard M.] Nixon, look how sordid, how hypocritical,” former Russian foreign
minister Andrei Kozyrev recently wrote
in the New York Times. The only way to undo some of the damage, he argued, is
to impeach and remove Trump. That would send a message to the world similar to
the one sent by Nixon’s resignation: “Moral principles still matter in American
politics and policy.”
