If you work for Trump, quit now
WASHINGTON -- Everyone who works for President Trump: Quit now. Save your souls. Save your honor, such as it is. Save your reputation, such as it remains. Russia attacked our democracy. Trump has demonstrated repeatedly, and did so again with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, that he doesn't care and won't defend his country.
If you work for this man and you call yourself a patriot, it is time for you to go.
This may sound excessive, even irresponsible. Indeed, for months I have agonized over the question of public service in the age of Trump.
Of course, as a general matter, it is better to have more grown-ups around Trump, mitigating his worst impulses, providing wisdom born of experience to counter his ignorance and petulance.
But that assessment assumes facts not in evidence: that Trump is educable or containable. Actually, it contravenes the available evidence. There is none that Trump has done anything but what Trump wants to do. Monday's news conference made that clear.
Extreme times call for extreme measures, and these are the extreme-est of times.
A foreign adversary -- not a competitor, as Trump would have it, an adversary -- mounted a sustained and multifront assault on the presidential election, specifically to help elect Trump. We knew this before Friday's indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officers for hacking into Democratic computers and emails to help secure Trump's election.
So I would ask those who continue to serve Trump: What is the impact and message of your continued presence? Are you mitigating Trump's excesses or enabling them?
Think about it. You are a Republican who loves your country. Or you are a foreign policy or intelligence professional. What do you do in the face of Trump's craven capitulation to an adversary? It is a hard choice but one that Trump is making easier every day. On Monday, he all but forced it.
Specifically, U.S. Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman, you cited "the need to hold the Russians accountable for what they did." In what way did Trump do that? Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats, you said Friday that, much as with rumblings of a terrorist attack on the United States before 9/11, "the warning lights are blinking red again," this time on the danger posed by Russian cyberattacks to the 2018 elections. How do you continue to serve a president so determined to ignore those flashing lights?
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