2017 Jan 6^th

Consider for a few minute the thesis that Donald J. Trump, President–elect of the United States is a Russian agent. All right, we both know he isn’t, in part because the Russians are too smart to tolerate as agent a sexually precocious nine-year-old inhabiting a 70-year-old’s slightly paunchy body.  He just took time from his presumably crowded schedule to tweet a chortle about Arnold Schwarzenegger whose Celebrity Apprentice TV show didn’t draw the viewers it had when The Donald was host. Such things are much more important to Trump than preparing to be President.

But if Trump isn’t a Russian plant exactly how is his behavior any different than it would have been if he were a Russian plant? Short answer is it isn’t! He has marginalized James Locksley the former CIA director who was advising his transition team. The transition team stopped notifying Locksley of their meetings so Locksley had no input. He didn’t want his name associated with the mess about various intelligence agencies, so he quit. Who can blame him.

Trump is left with General Flynn, the hyper-active former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency until he was fired for a combination of miss-management and so many made up tales that they became known around the agency he headed as “Flynn facts.” He was fired by his boss James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence. Shortly after the results of the election were known Clapper announced his own resignation. Trump, who favors payback might make the previously fired General Flynn the new Director of National Intelligence. That isn’t really likely because Flynn as an advisor to Trump needs no congressional approval; as Director of National intelligence he might have some hurdles to jump over.

Flynn has also had fun sitting with Putin after he gave well-paid speeches to RT, the Russian news agency controlled by Putin. Now we have the new Secretary of State Tillerson getting a personal medal from Putin; Trump’s personal advisor on security issues giving paid speeches and dinning with Putin; Trump claiming that he believes Julian Assange the originator of WikiLeaks, when he says he never got anything from Russian intelligence rather than our intelligence services who are sure that’s where Assange got his stories.

At this point Trump has done a great job of dissing the intelligence agencies. Admiral Rodgers, the Director of the National Security Agency, went further, expressing his concern that damage to the morale of the intelligence community’s professional workforce could potentially lead to the departures of key personnel.

“What we do is in no small part driven in part by the confidence of our leaders in what we do,” said Rogers. “And without that confidence, I just don’t want a situation where our workforce decides to walk.”

For someone whose signature campaign promise was to “Make America Great Again,” publicly trashing one of the fundamental pillars of the country’s national security apparatus seems an odd way to go about restoring the country’s greatness in the eyes of the world.

There it is: Trump has some VIP members of his new team who are dear friends of Putin; he has trashed the intelligence services that are supposed to provide him with information to protect the country because he doesn’t believe them. After he received the nomination, he insisted the RNC platform remove a plank aiming to provide Ukraine with weapons. I ask you; if you were Putin what more could you want of a plant who isn’t even in office yet.

OK so he isn’t a Russian agent, what’s the difference.