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Greydon Williams

News Reporter and Columnist

Editorial

We have to start paying attention and holding people accountable

Tuesday, November 7, 2017

It is time for the public to open their eyes. Whether or not you identify as a Democrat, Republican or third party, the Russia investigation exist and people need to be taking it seriously.

Paul Manafort, former campaign manager to Donald Trump, has been charged with failing to register as a foreign agent, false statements about being a foreign agent, conspiracy to launder money, conspiracy against the United States and tax fraud.

So what does Trump have to say about this situation? The President took to twitter on October 30 to say “Sorry, but this is years ago, before Paul Manafort was part of the Trump campaign. But why aren’t Crooked Hillary & the Dems the focus?????

He later followed with another tweet that said “….Also, there is NO COLLUSION!”

Also a former campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos, has pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI. Trump’s response? “…came to the campaign. Few people knew the young, low level volunteer named George, who has already proven to be a liar. Check the DEMS!”

The lie that the President is referring to is the one that Papadopoulos told the FBI, which is that, his collusion with Russia occurred before the campaign. However the FBI has now discovered the truth that the collusion occurred during the campaign, so I’m not sure what the President is trying to say here.

The President, his staff and his supporters seem to like this tactic of down playing the roles of people who find themselves in a negative light. Words like “volunteer”, “young” and “low level” are thrown around a lot. Sean Spicer stated Manafort played a “minimal role” in the Trump campaign despite being Trump’s campaign manager.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders stated of George Papadopoulos position “It was extremely limited; it was a volunteer position.” Despite the fact that Papadopoulos was a member of Trump’s foreign policy team and emailed a “high ranking Trump campaign official” to discuss Russia’s interest in Trump stating “Have been receiving a lot of calls over the last month about Putin wanting to host him and the team when the time is right,”

Another example of this behavior is when, alleged sexual assaulter Bill O’Reilly defended Jared Kushner after Kushner was implicated in meetings with the Russian government.

“He gets out there he looks like he is 17 years old, 18. He answers their questions about colluding with the Russians during the presidential campaign. His answer is ‘I didn’t do anything.’ Did I believe him? There is no reason not to believe him. If you were Putin and you wanted to undermine the election, is Jared Kushner where you are going? I don’t think so,” O’Reilly said.

Which is really an excellent point because if you were Putin and you were trying to undermine the election why would you go through a family member of the candidate you want elected. Why would you go through the guy whose task are currently: Middle East peace, government reform, opioid crisis management, criminal justice reform, liaison to Mexico, liaison to China and liaison to the Muslim community. Sanders also commented on the photo of the President and Papadopoulos saying “the president has thousands of photographs with millions of people” which is true. What is not true is that all of those “millions of people” that the president is in photographs with are on the President’s foreign policy team and all of them spent time trying to get the President and his staff to meet with Russia.

Listen, I get it, I know that accepting the evidence of this investigation requires doing something that nobody likes to, admitting that you are wrong, trust me I understand what it is like to be wrong. I thought for two years that there was no way Donald Trump would be elected president, but I was wrong. He was elected and nothing will ever change that he was elected.

I also know some of you will say that this investigation is “fake news.” You’ll say that it’s just the left-wing media trying to blast Trump’s perfect reputation because he never does anything wrong ever and he will go down in history as the greatest president ever#makeamericagreatagain#Trump2020#Iloveyoutrump#youhaveto believeme

Another problem with the fake news narrative is its implications about the media and its power. Yes, the media can lie and yes sometimes it does lie, but do you really think that a story that carries this much implication could just be made up by The New York Times? The problem with that narrative is that there is a conservative media too and if it were possible for the liberals to make up stories this big don’t you think the conservatives would have done it to Obama? So what does that leave us with? Well, either Trump and his campaign staff did collude with Russia to get him elected, or some of his staff tried to collude with Russia and Trump didn’t know about it while it was happening and won’t condemn them for it now. Either one is terrible and unpresidential.