By Dana Henricks, Florence
To those of you in Ravalli County who voted for Trump and plan to vote for him in 2020:
You are my friends, my neighbors, my fellow Bitterrooters, my fellow Montanans. And I am asking you for just one thing: Please reconsider.
I think I understand why you voted for Trump in 2016:
• You hated Hillary Clinton.
• You are Republicans and you wanted a Republican president.
• You liked Trump’s tough stand on immigration.
• You thought that, being a businessman, Trump would improve the economy, create new jobs, lower taxes, and get good trade deals from other countries.
• You liked that Trump was the exact opposite of politically correct.
• You liked that Trump was an outsider who promised to “drain the swamp.”
• You thought the system was broken and thought Trump would shake things up.
These are all legitimate reasons (although I don’t agree with them) for voting for Trump—the first time around, and maybe even in 2020, if you believe Trump lived up to your expectations.
However, despite the reasons you may have for supporting Trump, I am asking you to please reconsider. I’m sure you’ve guessed by now that I’m a Democrat. But it’s not because Trump is a Republican that I do not want to see him reelected. It’s because for the first time in my 57 years on Earth, I am terrified for our country.
I have lived through five Republican presidencies. I didn’t like it. But at no time did I ever think that Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush Sr., or Bush Jr. was compromised by a foreign government and doing its bidding.
But I believe this is true of Donald J. Trump. And that is terrifying.
Trump has been compromised by Vladimir Putin and the Russian government. It could be that Putin has information about illegal activities, such as money laundering. Or it could be that Putin is still dangling Trump Tower Moscow in front of his nose. Or both. We don’t know.
But it is clear that Trump has been compromised by Putin. There is no other explanation for Trump’s chummy behavior with former KGB agent Putin. No other explanation for why the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, Trump’s own Director of National Security Dan Coates, and most recently, Mueller’s report all confirm that the Russians interfered with the 2016 election, but Donald Trump continues to downplay its significance. No big deal.
Yes, it is a VERY big deal. We are at this very moment
engaged in what could be called Cyber War I. And Russia is winning. They have helped elect a president who trusts Putin more than U.S. intelligence agencies; who will not say one bad thing about Putin; who eagerly meets in private with Putin, without any record of what they discussed; who bans U.S. journalists, but welcomes Russian journalists in meetings with Putin; whose son-in-law tried to set up a secret back-channel communication with the Kremlin; and who is pushing for the U.S. to leave NATO and withdraw from Syria, two actions that would make Putin very happy.
Maybe you don’t care that Russia hacked the DNC, tried to provide the Trump campaign with dirt on Hillary, may have funneled money to the Trump campaign through the National Rifle Association, and used sophisticated trolling techniques to sway voters on social media. After all, Russia helped your guy win and made Hillary lose.
But it’s not just the elections or just Democrats that Russia is cyber attacking. They are attacking all of us. They are going after our city and state governments, our businesses, large and small, our power grids and communication systems, our military computer systems, our national secrets. And they are using social media to make us turn on each other: Republican against Democrat, conservative against liberal, white people against people of color, and so on. We can’t let this go on. We have to unite as a country or we are already defeated.
I urge you to read this Department of Defense article and then ask yourself if it is wise for the U.S. to have a president who will not cross Vladimir Putin in any way:
“Cyber Tops List of Threats to U.S., Director of National Intelligence Says”
(https://dod.defense.gov/News/Article/Article/1440838/cyber-tops-list-of-threats-to-us-director-of-national-intelligence-says/)
This is what keeps me up at night: Imagine that Donald Trump is awakened by the “three o’clock phone call” about an imminent nuclear attack by Russia. How does Trump respond? Does he alert the U.S. military so that we can launch our own nukes (that is, if the Russians haven’t first shut down the military computers that control our nukes)? Or does Trump call Putin to ask him to hold off for just a bit so that he and his family have time to safely board a private jet to Moscow?
So, Ravalli County Trump supporters, please reconsider before you vote for him again. Please put the security of our country first and foremost.