Summary: the election of Donald Trump would represent a national security disaster unparalleled American history. Trump is a Manchurian candidate in the truest sense . His public utterances make as clear as if he had shouted from the housetops his willingness to sell America out to Russia, China, and North Korea. While this conduct may not rise to the constitutional definition of treason, it nevertheless puts his cause and the Republican cause into the realms, at the very least, of constructive treason. Donald Trump’s willingness to cause harm to this country and her national security ought to disqualify him from any office of trust or profit anywhere in the United States, right down to local dog-catcher. Donald Trump is a traitor.
Britain votes today on the fraught question of whether to leave the European Union. The Brexit vote can be expected to have long ranging, potentially disastrous, ramifications for the United Kingdom and for NATO. As always, we should ask who stands to benefit from any shortsighted British decision to leave the EU. The immediate answer is glaringly obvious, Russia and her dictatorial Pres. Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin would be the most immediate winners should Britain leave the EU.
Republican presidential presumptive nominee Donald Trump has made his support for the “leave” side very clear and very public. Trump is almost alone among American political leaders or wannabe leaders in urging a Brexit, and it tends to fall in line with Donald Trump's other pro-Russia, anti-America, views and sentiments.
The Donald and Vladimir Vladimirovich has certainly become a mutual admiration society in recent weeks. It is no secret that the Russian strongman would prefer to deal with a President Trump rather than with a President Clinton. Indeed, reports have emerged from the Kremlin that the Putin regime would regard an election of Hillary Clinton as a casus belli, i.e., a justification for war. Presumably, this is intended to terrorize the American people into voting for gospodin Putin’s preferred candidate, Donald Trump.
We know why Vladimir Vladimirovich prefers Trump. The Donald is so ill-educated in even the rudiments of statecraft, and so thin-skinned, that it would be possible for Vladimir Vladimirovich to lead him by the nose. This of course has been the dream of generations of Soviet and Russian leaders, to have an American president whom they can essentially control. By attempting to intermeddle in the 2016 election, the Kremlin is, to all intents and purposes, undertaking a hostile takeover bid of the highest echelons of the United States government.
Doing so under threat of war if we elect the “wrong” candidate is a kind of blackmail which accomplishes two purposes. First, to the extent that the news of gospodin Putin’s war threat becomes known to the broad American electorate, the bloody mindedness we inherited from the British will assert itself as Americans line up and say “we will not go quietly, we will not be blackmailed or bullied.” The indignation that such Russian intervention in our elections can be expected to stir would be worth at least a million votes to Sec. Clinton’s campaign.
The second purpose gospodin Putin’s threat accomplishes is to drive Trump’s cause, and by extension that of the Republican Party whose nominee he is, fairly definitively into the realms of treason.
Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution defines treason: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.” The bar for treason is fairly high, which explains why it is the only federal crime which is specifically defined in the Constitution. It was placed there to ward off the kinds of abuses that had crept into the English law of treason, particularly under King Henry VIII, where so much as discussing the physical health of the King could be construed as treason.
But though the constitutional bar is high, prosecutions for treason can and have happened in the United States. There is thus a potentially compelling argument for pursuing Donald Trump on a charge of treason, or at the very least denying him a four year lease on the White House. If levying war against the United States or to hearing to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort is treason, then what can we say about Donald Trump’s policy proposals and prescriptions?
• The Donald has spoken of the desirability of pulling American support from NATO, while at the same time speaking glowingly of Vladimir Putin, who as we know, ardently desires Trump’s election to the presidency of the United States. An American exit from NATO would create as much havoc as a 100 armored division thrust into Germany’s Fulda gap. Does that strike anyone as giving aid and comfort to the enemy?
• The Donald has also advocated pulling our tripwire military presence from the Republic of Korea. Who benefits from an American pullout from South Korea? The obvious answer is North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. And if we pull out of South Korea, how does Japan defend herself? The Donald would have Japan arm herself of the teeth with nuclear weapons the Japanese have no desire or inclination to possess. Apparently, in his ignorance, The Donald has no recollection of two proper nouns that carry a whole weight of meaning to the people not only of Japan, but also of the world. Those nouns are Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Who is The Donald trying to sell out? Is it South Korea? Is it Japan? Or is it the entire American position in East Asia and the Western Pacific?
• The Donald’s public support for Britain’s departure from the EU also constitutes a material gift of aid and comfort to our enemies. The EU, as currently constituted, has been one of the most effective and helpful tools for rebuilding European civilization after the horrors of World War II that could be devised by the wit or artifice of man. Europe knows, too well, the horrific price of division and competing nationalisms. But again, it’s worth considering who has a vested interest in the breakup of the unified Europe, and that is the Kremlin. During the vote on Scottish secession last year, Russian intervention in favor of the breakaway of the northern kingdom was clear and muscular. From the Kremlin and from state media alike, there emerged a steady drumbeat of Russian criticism of the voting process in the referendum, along with steady Russian claims that the election (which returned a blowout 55-45 majority for keeping the United Kingdom entire) had somehow been “rigged.” This notwithstanding the fact that British elections are a byword for integrity, transparency, and trustworthiness in result. The Kremlin’s interest in sundering the United Kingdom is unambiguously informed by its belief that an independent Scotland would not have been able to control effectively the so-called GIUK gap through which Russian submarines and surface naval assets can pass into the North Atlantic. They are hoping for similar results from a Brexit, reckoning that the strategic calculus can only be favorable to Moscow and harmful to Washington.
Listening to Donald Trump’s policy prescriptions, to the extent that he has made any, is to listen to a whole series of proposals calculated to harm the United States and its national security. Unlike differences over domestic policy, where Donald Trump is also vulnerable to a charge of aiding and abetting terrorism with his ridiculous positions on gun safety legislation, foreign policy proposals which can be expected to do harm to the United States stand in a somewhat different constitutional realm. When a presidential candidate proposes measures or takes positions that cause actual harm or raise the reasonable foreseeability of harm, he is skirting close to treason, if not actually definitively entering the realms of treason.
While basic considerations of due process, derived from centuries of common law experience, declare that a person is innocent until proven guilty, those principles do not apply in a political campaign where the public can judge an un-vetted candidate solely upon the words that come out of his mouth; what you say is your job interview to the 320 million Americans who will be your boss.
By that token, the Donald is flubbing his job interview quite badly. Not only is he flubbing it badly, but he is also giving clear indication that he is in fact a “Manchurian candidate,” whose willingness to sell America down the river to the Russians, the Chinese, and the North Koreans ought to unfit him for any office of trust or profit whatsoever under the United States, or any of them, right down to local dog-catcher.
We cannot afford to elect a potential traitor to the presidency of the United States. All of Trump’s bullshit about Benghazi or “crooked Hillary” notwithstanding, he convicts himself out of the words of his own mouth, if not of treason, certainly of treasonable intent at the very least. Under section 4 of Article II of the Constitution, “The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” If Donald Trump were to be inaugurated, his impeachment for treason should be set in train immediately. Based on his words alone, the Congress would have ample justification to remove him from office.
However, the simplest way to prevent the national trauma of an impeachment is to ensure the Donald Trump never gets to the White House. If redbaiting will keep Donald Trump away from the White House and ensure his defeat at the polls, then let us, as liberals and progressives, not be self-defeatingly unwilling to engage in redbaiting for the sake of the nation.
Donald Trump is a traitor, and that says something non-recommending about his supporters. A preventative and comprehensive prophylaxis is recommended.
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Paul S Marchand is an attorney who lives and practices in Cathedral City, California. He expects that if Donald Trump is elected President of the United States he will be obliged to seek political asylum abroad to avoid the insensate and vindictive response of President Trump, who is made it very clear how he proposes to deal with even the slightest criticism. Dublin is looking very attractive right about now.
