President-elect Trump was correct to criticize the website BuzzFeed for violating journalistic standards in publishing an unverified, salacious, and at times provably false memo. But he goes further and seems to chastise anyone who asks about his views of, or ties to, Russia.
While some charges against Trump relating to Russia have been proven bogus, others are plausible enough to have piqued the interest of intelligence agencies, law enforcement and Republican senators. Trump and his team cannot wave all questions away as "speculation" and "unverifiable." Those are the arguments of a defendant in a court of law, and they do not remove the cloud of suspicion in the court of public opinion.
Trump needs to do more because at the moment, it's hard to shake an uneasiness about Trump and Russia.
He has lost the benefit of the doubt on this matter. He and his allies, in telling us to disregard various allegations, are asking us to ignore too many bits of corroborating circumstantial evidence that suggests an unseemly intimacy between Trump and Vladimir Putin's corrupt regime.
Exhibit A is Trump's disinclination to criticize or confront Putin's Russia over the country's hacking of American politicians and apparent efforts to destabilize our democracy.
Get the Exclusive
05.13.2025