The Wages of 'Collusion' Meme is Big Trouble

The news has just broken that Vladimir Putin will expel 755 American diplomats — or “diplomats,” depending on whether they’re working for the State Department or some other, er, agencies — in retaliation for the latest round of American sanctions imposed by a panicked Congress being stampeded into increasingly foolish actions by the resentful Democrats and their allies in the Compromised Media. This is a toxic brew that can have no good outcome, but the short version is: we’ve just been neutralized in Russia.

Russian president Vladimir Putin announced Sunday that he was ordering 755 American diplomats out of that country. In an interview with the state-owned broadcaster Russia 24, Putin said the move was in response to “illegal restrictions” imposed on the country by the United States. Putin claims that there are over a “thousand” American diplomatic employees in Russia, but “755 will have to cease their activities in the Russian Federation.”

The Senate passed a new round of sanctions on Thursday aimed at punishing Moscow for interfering on the United States’ presidential election, among other things. A U.S. State Department official declined to comment Putin’s announcement, telling NBC News: “It is our policy to not comment on the number of individuals serving at our missions abroad.”

If this were a Bond movie, our hero would meet a shadowy figure with a foreign accent at a back table in a seedy restaurant in Baku, where Robbie Coltrane or Christoph Waltz would be waiting for him. “Congratulations, Mr. Bond,” he would intone. “You’ve just been blinded.”

As Clarice Feldman notes, the entire Democrat/Compromised Media fantasy over Russian “collusion” during the 2016 election has now collapsed, but the damage the Left has done to our nation purely out of pique over its loss last fall is becoming incalculable. Using their standard technique of “raising questions,” they began a Narrative that has led to a falling-dominoes series of calamities that now threaten not only the Trump presidency, but also the very legitimacy of our form of government. Consider:

1. While cleanup crews at the Javits Center were still scrubbing down the walls and picking up the pieces of shattered glass occasioned by Hillary Clinton’s rage at losing what she thought was a fixed fight, her henchmen concocted a series of excuses that they no doubt beta-tested with members of the Compromised Media. Whining about the glass ceiling and sexism didn’t fly, but the Red-Diaper-Baby brigade obviously loved the “Russians Are Coming” meme.
2. As Trump put his cabinet together, the “collusion” charge had resonated so strongly via the echo chamber that Attorney General Jeff Sessions, an honorable man perhaps too naive for his own good, felt compelled to recuse himself from participating in anything to do with Russia, and so ceded the supervisory turf over something he knew to be a lie to his deputy.
3. Enough of a critical media mass was achieved that assistant AG Rod Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller as the special prosecutor of an as-yet unspecific statutory offense. Mueller, long past retirement age, immediately dispelled any notion that he might wrap up quickly by hiring a slew of Democrat-donor lawyers and settling in to investigate Trump’s finances. After all, he has his criminal; now all he needs is the crime, and if it has to be kiting checks, spitting on the sidewalk or picking his feet in Poughkeepsie, so be it. The Grand Inquisitor’s in no rush.
4. Now that Mueller is beetling along, the Democrats can afford to walk away from not only the “collusion” meme but also the Fusion GPS “fake dossier” plant that helped — via the good offices of the wretched John McCain — to propel the Narrative. Mission accomplished!
5. Increasingly frustrated, Trump is lashing out on Twitter at any target of opportunity from Sessions to the Chinese to his own staff. He’s replaced the hapless Reince Priebus as chief of staff with Marine general John Kelly, hoping to bring some order to the West Wing — but now he’ll have to find a replacement for Kelly at the Department of Homeland Security, where Kelly was already making a difference by changing the what-are-you-gonna-do? whine and arresting and deporting illegal aliens, sob stories or no.
6. At the same time, North Korea is test-firing missiles that can reach the United States — thanks, Bill Clinton! — while the Iranians are busy continuing their nuclear program — thanks, Barack Obama! The last two Democrat Party presidents have brought our country and the world to the brink of nuclear war, and will pay no price for it. Instead, the Israelis, the South Koreans and the Japanese will take it on the chin — and maybe Los Angeles, too.
7. Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, GOP congressional staffers are now backing away from the president, and some are openly talking about awaiting the arrival of President Pence. A preference cascade is forming, and the administration, if it wants to save itself, needs to take drastic and dramatic action.

In short, the “Russia!” meme has worked like a charm. If the Democrats/Compromised Media/Never Trumpers had wanted to set out to help Putin in his global chess match vs. the United States, they could not have done a better job. And perhaps that was their goal all along.

The truth is, we’ve never witnessed anything like this before — not, at least, since 1861. Back then, the Democrats made the fatal error of actually firing on Fort Sumter and waging a prolonged rebellion against the federal government under the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln — whom they later assassinated. That conflict resulted, thanks to Grant and Sherman, in the devastation of the South, and a century of poverty, backwardness and resentment. Eventually, the Democrats seized the civil rights movement as their redemptive vehicle, and somehow managed the trick (via the media) of convincing the rest of the country that they were never the racist, seditious, literally anti-American sappers they so obviously were, and still are.

Today, they wouldn’t make the mistake of going to actual war against the country-as-founded. Just as they refused to accept Lincoln as the lawfully elected president, so do they refuse to accept Trump; if Lincoln was the first of his party to reach the White House, they mean to make sure Trump is the last. To use a favorite phrase of theirs: “by any means necessary.” That’s because the Democrat/Compromised Media Complex plays for keeps. And we don’t.

Meanwhile, any hope of detente and strategic cooperation with Russia slips away — thanks to the Democrats, who since Lenin have never met a Russian they didn’t love. The sanctions, which only Bernie Sanders and Rand Paul voted against, also include a possibly unconstitutional provision to tie the president’s conduct of foreign policy in the future, by making it impossible for Trump to lift them without congressional approval. Trump has said he will sign the bill, but let’s see how long that provision lasts in court.

The Senate overwhelmingly voted Thursday to impose new sanctions on Russia, joining the House in approving the measure by veto-proof margins. The vote on the bill — which would also add sanctions against North Korea and Iran — was 98-2, with only Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rand Paul, R-Ky., dissenting. The House passed the measure on Tuesday by 419-3. The bill targets Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and Syria, citing corruption, human rights abuses and weapons sales.

“This arouses deep regrets, because such actions imply aggravating circumstances and special cynicism,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a joint news conference with Finnish President Sauli Niinisto in Savonlinna, Finland. Putin called the proposed sanctions “an obvious attempt to use geopolitical advantages in competition to pursue [the United States’] economic interests at the expense of its allies,” according to the Russian news agency TASS.

And all this — all of it — because the Democrats cannot accept the results of the election. Now, however, they have the feeble-minded and weak-spined Republicans and impotent “conservative” Vichycons joining in the stampede; note in the CNN clip linked just above, host Anderson Cooper attributes the sanctions not to “corruption,” et al., but to Russia’s “interference in the election, among other issues.” The case may have factually cratered, but the meme itself will not die until it’s fully exhausted for propaganda purposes.

They never stop, they never sleep, they never quit. It’s long past time to start fighting back — not necessarily to defend Trump the man (for the Democrats and the Compromised Media, there’ll be a distracting “scandal” a day, forever) but to defend Trump the president, his office, the validity of our electoral system, and the proper workings of the federal government in its task to uphold the Constitution and defend the nation from all threats, foreign and domestic.

That the Democrats don’t seem to care about any of that — indeed, that they are now actively working against it — tells you all you need to know about them.