The Putin defense: How far will Donald Trump go now to stay in power?

Donald Trump never faced even the tiniest chance that two-thirds of the United States Senate would vote to find him guilty in the impeachment trial we’re now being told will come to its ignominious end in the middle of next week. You don’t need to put on a defense when you already know the outcome of the trial. He could have gone with what you might call the “potted plant defense,” sending Jay Sekulow or Pat Cipollone or even one of the lesser lights on his team to essentially sit there by himself and watch the House managers set their hair on fire. He didn’t even need to ask for what amounted to a directed verdict of acquittal. He had all the Republican votes he needed right from the start.

Trump didn’t bother merely swatting aside the rule of law and the Constitution. No, he dropped all pretense and went full-on authoritarian, tapping no less a figure than Jeffrey Epstein pal Alan Dershowitz to present the Putin Defense: If it’s good for Trump, it’s good for the country, and that means it can’t be illegal.

I guess we always knew it would come to this. How else can you account for Trump’s parade of obsequiousness to Vladimir Putin? It goes back to December of 2015, when Trump was running for the Republican nomination. He appeared on “Morning Joe” not long after Putin had praised him as “brilliant” and “talented.” Host Joe Scarborough asked him if he still accepted Putin’s praise in the face of his violent policies. Continue reading.