Collusion vs. illusion

The revelations by former Democratic National Committee boss Donna Brazile — that, as Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders battled for the presidential nomination in 2016, the national party was doing Clinton’s bidding — are legitimately scandalous. The claims by President Trump — that all this adds up to illegal activity, necessitating federal criminal charges — are downright comical.

Just as he cynically repurposed the term “fake news,” which originally referred to truly false reports, into a base smear against legitimate reporting, Trump now labels the Brazile account of the Clinton-Sanders drama “collusion.”

Pathetic. The DNC is not a hostile foreign power; it’s an American political party. And while under Debbie Wasserman-Schultz the committee was dishonestly captive to Clinton and should never be so compromised again, there’s no law that says it must be neutral.

Trump muddies the water now because there’s ever greater evidence of actual nefarious collusion to which he much answer.

Such as testimony by former Trump aide Carter Page indicating that Attorney General Jeff Sessions likely committed perjury when he swore that he was unaware of contacts between the campaign and Russia.

Or the fact that another Trump foreign policy aide, George Papadopoulos, made repeated contacts during the campaign with the Kremlin — then lied about it. As Trump himself seemingly did when he said he knew of no one from his campaign in touch with Russia during the election.

Or the millions of dollars — in rubles — that poured into Facebook ads smearing Clinton and touting Trump. Whether the Trump campaign had any hand in those is under investigation.

Rotten apples: a party putting a finger on the scale to benefit one candidate over another. Lethally poisonous oranges: a foreign power helping a campaign win the White House.