The “Russian shadow”
Donald Trump’s first address to Congress last week was overshadowed by a new storm of allegations about his administration’s ties to Russia. It emerged that his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, had twice talked to the Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak during last year’s election campaign – although he had told his Senate confirmation hearing that he “did not have communications with the Russians” during that period. Sessions ignored Democratic calls for his resignation, but said he’d step back from investigations into Moscow’s alleged interference in the campaign. Trump stoutly defended Sessions, and declared that the Democrats were engaging in a “total witch-hunt”.
On Saturday, the president launched an unprecedented attack on Barack Obama on Twitter, accusing him of a “Nixon/ Watergate” plot to tap his communications: “Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is Mccarthyism!” No evidence was provided, and Obama flatly denied the story. This week Trump also issued a revised version of his travel ban on the citizens of six Muslim-majority countries ( see page 10).
What the editorials said
“It’s hard to decide what is more disturbing,” said The New York Times: “that so many officials in [Trump’s] campaign and administration were in contact with the Russian government… or that they keep neglecting to tell the truth.” Just a few weeks ago, the president fired his national security adviser, Michael Flynn, over contacts with ambassador Kislyak, which Flynn had likewise denied; Trump’s son-inlaw and adviser Jared Kushner also seems to have met Kislyak. As for Trump’s “childish Twitter rampage” against Obama, it marks a new low: one president “baselessly charging criminality by another”. This is a “dangerous moment” in US history.
Washington is going “nuts”, said The Wall Street Journal. Democratic leaders and the media “wildly overreacted” to the news about Sessions: a senator meeting an ambassador in “the not-so-secret lair of his Senate office” is an everyday occurrence. And though Trump’s accusations against Obama seem wild, there is evidence that intelligence material has been used to “smear” Trump’s team – the leaked details of Flynn’s contacts with Kislyak, for example. “What the country desperately needs are some grown-ups to intervene, discover the facts, and then lay them out to the American people.”