Putin

That’s probably an overstatement. And it’s important not to ascribe too much importance to Putin’s various tactical successes. Putin looked tough and successful in Syria but the bill for that particular venture has yet to be paid in full, the downing of a Russian jet in the Sinai desert killing 224 in December 2015, and the assassination of the Russian ambassador in Ankara in December 2016 by a killer shouting he was avenging Aleppo are only the first of more such incidents to come. Russia’s attacks on NATO and American democracy may inadvertently end up making both stronger. The results of the investigation into the Russia connection can also force the U.S. take the necessary steps to make the country less vulnerable to the various forms of cyber warfare that will increasingly dominate the international scene.

Trump and his supporters have a different view of that investigation, taking it more personally, more politically, the two almost inseparable in Trump’s case. “The Russia investigation is being used by his political opponents to delegitimize his entire presidency and to delegitimize his agenda,” said Sam Nunberg, identified as a “longtime Trump political advisor who remains close with West Wing aides.”

Though it may be difficult for Trump and some of his supporters to fathom, national security is of greater importance than Trump’s presidency and agenda. Yet there is also no denying that for Trump’s political opponents the Russia investigation offers the tantalizing prospect of a Trump impeachment. Still, Trump and his rise to power prove that this is a time where even the most grotesquely improbable events can and do occur.

And there is, as historian Douglas Brinkley put it, “a smell of treason in the air.”

But even in all this swirling murk a few things are definite and clear. There are simply too many points of connection between the Trump campaign and the Russians to be mere matters of chance. On the opening day of the House Intelligence Committee hearings, ranking member Adam Schiff stated the matter with eloquent logic in this abbreviated version of his remarks since there are simply too many instances to cite here: