OPINION

Doug Thompson: Red, blue, or red, white and blue?

Loyalty to the country should be non-partisan

Our counter-intelligence network just removed a Russian informant as our national security adviser.

Michael Flynn gave information and advice to a foreign power at great risk. Our spies recorded him doing it. Then, after taking the adviser job, he lied about talking to the Russians to his superiors. Then our spies -- also at great risk -- had to go to news outlets to force any action. Once exposed, Flynn resigned.

Then the president -- who used an intelligence briefing about a threatening missile launch as dinner theater at his posh country club Saturday night -- bitterly complained that there are leaks. Then we found out President Donald Trump had known there was a loyalty problem with Flynn for weeks.

No, the problem is not leaks. The problem is that we had a source for a foreign government working as nothing less than the national security adviser. It took leaks to remove him. The real problem is that anything -- even valuable service to another country that has more nuclear warheads than we do -- is viewed as either a blue thing or a red thing. This is not. This is a red, white and blue thing.

If the national security adviser for President Clinton -- either the Clinton who won his elections or the one who did not win hers -- had done this, Republicans in Congress would have called for Clinton's impeachment. Congress should not go that far, but it should care. Instead, it may have a few closed-door hearings largely done for partisan damage control.

This is only the most outrageous and recent collusion with Russia by a Trump man. Cut for length, the rest of this column is the same situation as described in this space -- on July 30:

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The only difference between hacking and burglary is the technique.

Someone stole information from the Democratic National Headquarters this year. The Watergate burglars attempted the same thing in 1972. The burglars had to enter a building to plant their bugs. The hackers didn't. There's no other difference.

Security firms say Russian intelligence agents did the hacking. Trump promises to "make America great again." There's no good answer to why the Russian government would help someone who could deliver on that promise.

"Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press," Trump said during a rambling news conference. The emails he referred to were deleted from a private server used by the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, when she was secretary of state. Clinton was investigated -- and severely criticized -- by the FBI for keeping some classified information on that insecure server.

The FBI found no evidence Clinton's server had been hacked. What a shame, by Trump 's logic.

Trump's remark wasn't a joke. Nothing about this was ever close to funny. The GOP nominee for president asked the Russians to do him a favor. He hoped aloud they would create a severe security breach. Clinton's carelessness, which ran the mere risk of allowing such a breach, had Trump 's supporters chanting "lock her up" at their convention last week.

What would conservatives' reaction be if either President Barack Obama or former secretary Clinton did this? Suppose Vladimir Putin had friends whom Clinton courted as investors. Suppose she refused to disclose how much those investors put into her businesses.

Suppose Clinton's campaign chairman was the Democratic equivalent of Trump 's campaign manager, Paul Manafort. Manafort has lobbied for Russian-backed former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych for more than 10 years. Presumably, Manafort has other, less famous Russian clients. He won't discuss that.

Now suppose a strong anti-Russian aggression plank was pried out of Clinton's party's platform just before the convention. That's exactly what happened to the Republican platform. There was a plank proposal to provide the Ukraine with weapons to fight pro-Russian "rebels." [Pulling this] defied the foreign policy advice of just about every expert in the GOP.

Then, just last week, Trump said he wouldn't necessarily defend a NATO ally in the event of Russian aggression. Then Wednesday, at the same news conference in which he called for more Russian hacking, he said he would consider recognizing the Russian seizure of the Crimea from the Ukraine and ending sanctions levied for it.

There's enough grounds for suspicion here to fuel a dozen Clinton or Obama conspiracy theories. I wish a Clinton or Obama had been involved. We'd have a House select committee investigation by now.

This isn't "just politics" any more.

Commentary on 02/18/2017

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