Russia, the president-elect and the election outcome

Donald J. Trump’s reaction to charges that the Russian government interfered with the 2016 election tells us something important. It tells us that Trump does not think as a president of the United States must think.

Ask yourself: What’s the single most important duty of a president? The most important duty of a president is to protect the country. So when a president or president-elect is told that an unfriendly foreign power has attempted to interfere with our electoral process, the only responsible course is to take the claim seriously, undertake an in-depth investigation and then take action if that’s necessary.

Trump hasn’t taken that course. From the beginning, and with no apparent investigation, he has dismissed claims of Russian intervention as nonsense. He doesn’t want to talk about it, and he doesn’t want anybody else talking about it either. And he has taken that stance despite the fact that government agencies and top private-sector cybersecurity experts are all telling him that he is wrong.

In other words, Trump’s chief concern is not protecting the country. His first and primary concern is protecting himself and his ego. It is all about him. Every action, every response coming from the Trump camp has been motivated not out of concern for the country but out of concern for protecting Trump’s self-image.

And in rushing to defend the Trump ego, he and his staff have done even greater damage to the country.

For example, by lashing out and attacking the patriotism and professionalism of our intelligence community,

Trump has opened a gaping breach with those who must serve as his eyes and ears on the rest of the world once he takes office next month.

He had already been dismissive of their work, refusing to receive the daily intelligence briefings that are standard for presidents-elect because, as he explained it on Fox News, he’s already “smart” and doesn’t need to sit through the briefings. With his latest barrage against the CIA and other agencies, he has now put the intelligence community and everyone else in government on clear notice: As president, he will not react well when unwelcome news is brought to him; he will attack those who do so and he prefers people who will tell him what he wants to hear.

And of course, there’s no shortage of people eager to play that role. Take former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, who is apparently in line for a top job at the State Department. Over the weekend, Bolton defended Trump by suggesting that the hacking of both the Democratic and Republican parties was a “false flag operation” conducted by American intelligence at the orders of the Obama administration, with the goal of falsely implicating the Russians as the culprits.

It requires you to believe that as a key part of this “false flag operation,” the Obama administration hacked Democratic Party email servers and then arranged the leaking of emails damaging to Hillary Clinton’s campaign. In essence, he needs you to believe that Obama threw the election so he could later blame Russia and Trump.

It is madness, pure and undiluted madness. And yet those engaging in this madness are being given the keys to immense power. We have screwed up, America.