Tuesday, July 17, 2018

What a conservative thinks about Trump in Helsinki

Bret Stephens was a deputy editor with the Wall Street Journal. Here is an excerpt from a conversation with Gail Collins of The NY Times:

Also, I’m thinking about just what Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and the rest of right-wing punditry would be saying if it had been President Barack Obama at that podium, saying the sort of things Trump was saying, not to mention the way he said it.

They’d call him the Manchurian Candidate. They’d accuse him of treason. They’d call for an armed insurrection or something close to it. They’d say he hates America. And they wouldn’t be wrong. Here is a president of the United States who repeatedly blames America first; who takes the word of a former K.G.B. agent over his own intelligence agencies; who promises to work constructively with a despot whose regime kills journalists, shoots down civilian airliners and uses nerve agents to assassinate its enemies abroad; and who aims his rhetorical fire on an opposing party instead of an enemy government. And the Make America Great Again crowd, with an exception or two, says pretty much nothing, or averts its gaze, or switches the subject.

I’m not speechless, exactly. But as a disaffected conservative, I just feel like someone who’s trying to scream while underwater.

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