President Obama in his Farewell Address yesterday asked that anyone not pleased with the outcome of elections do something about it. Take some responsibility. Even run for office. Don’t keep quiet. Otherwise, he implied, you’re part of the problem.
On the same day that he spoke we learned the following:
Classified documents presented last week to President Obama and President-elect Trump included allegations that Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump…
The allegations were presented in a two-page synopsis that was appended to a report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. The allegations came, in part, from memos compiled by a former British intelligence operative, whose past work US intelligence officials consider credible.
Why were we fortunate to learn about this additional intelligence information even if so late?
One reason the nation’s intelligence chiefs took the extraordinary step of including the synopsis in the briefing documents was to make the President-elect aware that such allegations involving him are circulating among intelligence agencies, senior members of Congress and other government officials in Washington.
Then we’re told that Trump’s campaign surrogates were in touch with Russian government intermediaries during the election:
Now we’re supposed to sit back and accept that Trump must be inaugurated. We’re supposed to clap and cheer, talk about which designers dressed Trump’s wife and daughters, and act as if we weren’t all duped. Why? Could it be so that Mike Pence, who didn’t run for president, can replace Trump rather than the woman who actually won 3 million more votes than Trump?
What part of this inauguration can’t go forward do we not understand? Aren’t those insisting on a “smooth transition,” including Congress, complicit in potentially and perhaps irrevocably harming the U.S., democracy and the world order? Of course they are.
This is not, by a long shot, what the American people expect of their leaders. That is not what American patriots do. That is not what a free press and the people should allow without a fight.
