BECKET ADAMS: CNN contributor (wrongly) accuses Trump of treason.

They keep using this word. I do not think it means what they think it means. Ret. Lt. Col. Ralph Peters, who fled Fox News for CNN in March, accused President Trump this week of treason.

“Collusion outright may not be a crime in and of itself,” he said in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, “[but] treason is a crime. Collaborating and conspiring with a hostile foreign power against the United States is a crime.”

Peters added, “Receiving material support, clandestine material support from a hostile foreign power is a crime. And we get to the people around Trump. Money laundering is a crime. Tax fraud is a crime. Lying under oath is a crime.”

Let’s back this train up for a second and look at his treason allegation. The politest way to respond is to say: He’s full of it.

I’ve enjoyed reading Peters’ novels since the late ’80s. Red Army, The War in 2020, and especially Flames of Heaven remain favorites to this day. And his non-fiction work for the US Army War College magazine Parameters during the Nineties and early Naughts was always brilliant and frequently prescient.

But lately he’s really come unhinged.