On Veterans Day, President Donald Trump offered some words of comfort to a veteran of the Cold War—a former KGB officer named Vladimir Putin. I wish this was a joke, but Mr. Trump shook Mr. Putin’s hand and essentially absolved him of any involvement in crimes that American intelligence professionals are quite certain he’s guilty of.
In doing so, Mr. Trump disrespected every American patriot who has worked and sacrificed to protect our institutions from enemies abroad. This includes members of the military, career intelligence professionals and the current CIA director (appointed by Mr. Trump), who says unequivocally that Mr. Putin is behind a decades-long effort to undermine American democracy.
Are Trump supporters not troubled by this alarming pattern? Mr. Trump appointed a foreign agent to lead his campaign. (Paul Manafort was secretly working for a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine.) Then he gave the nation’s highest security clearance to a foreign agent working for Turkey. (National security adviser Mike Flynn failed to report under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, a felony. He resigned in disgrace after it was revealed that he had lied to Vice President Mike Pence about meetings with the Russian ambassador.)
There’s a word for someone who offers aid and comfort to our enemies or puts their own interests above those of the nation, and it isn’t “patriot.” Am I supposed to believe it’s “president”?
CHUCK STARESINIC
Lawrenceville
