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Why Trump’s Detractors Cry ‘Treason’

President Trump is, as ever, fortunate in his enemies. Whatever one thinks of what he said in Helsinki, the overreaction is helping him plow through yet another media meltdown. Cries of “treason,” charges that the president is a Russian “asset,” and insistence that remarks at a press conference constitute impeachable offenses fire up the Democratic base. To everyone else, they seem unhinged.

What’s the fuss about, anyway? Before Helsinki, Mr. Trump had said three times—on camera—that he believed Russia meddled in the 2016 election. Yet a reporter asked him again. Why?

Mr. Trump intuits, correctly, that the media push the issue in order to undermine his legitimacy. He obviously has no interest in helping them do that, hence he challenges the question’s premise. His opponents won’t take yes for an answer because asking him over and over fuels the falsehood that he “sides with Russia over his own intelligence agencies.”

He doesn’t. But . . . Read the rest at the Wall Street Journal (subscription may be required).

Photo credit: Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call

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About Michael Anton

Michael Anton is a lecturer and research fellow at Hillsdale College, a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, and a former national security official in the Trump Administration. He formerly wrote under the pseudonym Publius Decius Mus when he was a senior editor of American Greatness. He is the author most recently of The Stakes: America at the Point of No Return.

Photo: UNITED STATES - JULY 18: Protesters hold up lit letters spelling "treason" as protesters gather in front of the White House for a rally and candlelight vigil on Wednesday night, July 18, 2018. The protest was one of 100-Plus events around the country following 12 new indictments in Muellers Russia Probe and Trumps comments in Helsinki during the summit with Putin. (Photo By Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call)