Adoption = Sanctions

For Trump supporters who discount his Russia problems, or blow them off as being too complicated to understand, or see them as a plot by Democrats and the media, a discussion of adoptions might be enlightening. When Trump folks talked about this subject, adoption, at the infamous Donald, Jr. meeting, and when Trump himself kicked it around with Putin at G-20, it’s important to understand that they were talking about one thing and one thing only: sanctions.

The narrative is straightforward enough and easy to follow. In 2012, the U.S. Congress, in an overwhelming bi-partisan vote (365-43 in the House, 92-4 in the Senate), passed the Magnitsky Act -- a law, just so we're clear – that imposed sanctions on Russia for human rights violations; specifically, the murder in a Russian prison of whistle blower Sergei Magnitsky. Putin was plenty mad about these sanctions and to retaliate he took it out on innocent children, decreeing that adoptions of Russian children by Americans would no longer be permitted. That’s the “adoptions” connection. Putin’s heartless action of course did nothing to alter these sanctions or others that are equally rankling to him – the ones that were imposed for his country’s bloody invasion of its sovereign neighbor Ukraine and ruthless takeover of Crimea and those that were imposed by President Obama for Russia’s cyber-attack on the United States.

And then came the Trump administration. Putin unquestionably sees this administration as fertile territory for getting these sanctions lifted. Why? Almost certainly because Trump has major business interests (i.e., entanglements) involving Russia that give Russia leverage over him. It is those business entanglements, and what they might mean to Trump’s ability and willingness to do his solemn and sworn duty to protect the interests of his country (as opposed to those of himself and his family), that are being investigated by two congressional committees and the office of the Special Counsel. It is now beyond obvious that Trump is hiding something and working very hard to keep whatever it is hidden, and it is increasingly clear that the sanctions, because of whatever hold the Russians have on Trump, are in play. He has thrown every conceivable roadblock in front of these investigations, undercutting or firing every government official involved, attempting to de-legitimize the work of the Special Counsel, throwing his own intelligence people, including the FBI and the CIA, under the bus, and, now, feeling out the idea of pardons.

As for those who maintain that the Russia thing is a non-issue, a distraction, they should understand this: By siding with Russia, the Trump people are protecting a country whose leadership, to maintain their hold on power, works assiduously and ceaselessly to discredit Western democracy, lest their own people get ideas. That work has included an attack on the United States by way of a disruption of our electoral processes – a strike at the heart of what makes America America. People who continue to claim that Trump’s Russia problems are small potatoes are either whistling past the graveyard or don’t understand the problem. Or their unwholesome, see-no-evil hero worship has rendered them completely delusional. In any case, Trump’s stance on all of this is unsustainable. The dots are being connected. It’s all going to come out. The fat lady is about to sing.