The Siberian Candidate is now the Siberian President

by John MacBeath Watkins

I confess, I have been remiss. While our new president has been showing us why we can't have nice things, I have been silent.

Words have failed me. I have a BA and an MA in political science, and none of what's been happening in Washington has made sense to me.

When I first heard of the title of Matt Taibbi's new book, Insane Clown President, I thought that surely, this goes too far.

Not even close. The resignation of Gen. Michael Flynn as National Security Adviser marks the third person to leave President Trump's inner circle because of ties to Russia. Paul Manafort, who joined the Trump campaign back in March of last year, left the campaign in late August because of his ties to Russia (such as arranging for fake anti-NATO rallies in Ukraine to help Russia keep the region as a client.)

Carter Page left the Trump camp in December when it came out that his links to Russia were under investigation by the CIA.

Flynn's resignation letter admits he lied to Vice President Pence. It does not say that he lied to Donald Trump. And Trump didn't fire him Jan. 26, when he learned that Flynn had spoken to the Russian Ambassador to the United States and lied to Pence about it.

This all seems a little curious. Why wait 2 1/2 weeks to fire the man? Why not fire him before the whole thing blew up in public? Could it be that Trump was aware of the call all along, could he even have directed Flynn to tell the Russians that the sanctions President Obama had put in place to penalize the Russians for attempting to sway the American election would be walked back once Trump was president?

It seems likely that Trump and his inner circle knew about the Russian intervention all along, and there are even allegations that there was a quid pro quo for the Russians for doing this.

Remember this?

The dossier's claim about a Ukraine-WikiLeaks quid pro quo alleges that Trump would refrain from speaking forcefully, if at all, during the 2016 presidential campaign about Russia's 2014 incursion into eastern Ukraine. In return, Russia would provide WikiLeaks the documents it stole from the Democratic National Committee.

It seems increasingly likely that the Trump camp has been working with the Russians for quite a long time. I, of course, don't know for certain why this is. My guess would be that there's a carrot and a stick involved. There's got to be a reason Trump has resisted all attempts to get him to release his taxes, and one possible reason would be that it might show how much he is financially entangled with Russia. And in Russia, if you have money to invest, you have ties to Vladimir Putin.

It seems quite likely, given President Trump's known proclivities, that the have some sort of dirt on him. It could be that it's the  infamous claims in the "unverified dossier" that Trump hired young women to pee on each other on a bed he knew President Obama and his wife had slept on. Or that could be misdirection, and they have something else on him. Or, it could be that the money link is enough.

Late in the presidential campaign, there were people calling Donald Trump "the Siberian candidate." I don't think we know the extent of his links to Russia or his motivations. But this seems like the only issue currently on the table that could bring his presidency to an early end.