The Damaging Costs of the Trump-Russia Collusion Conspiracy Theory

The false charges and disinformation about Trump's alleged collusion with Russia in 2016 were instrumental in bringing the world to its dangerous current moment. Here's how.

Last week, I wrote about “conspiracy theories that actually matter”. That is, theories that go beyond just harmless views held by a few people that may or not be true, but instead become widely believed and do great damage to society. There was one conspiracy theory that I didn’t include because it was hotly disputed, even in the moment, but has been no less damaging. That is the theory that Donald Trump colluded with Vladimir Putin and Russia to win the 2016 presidential election.

Trump’s collusion with Russia is now decisively debunked, but huge numbers of people still believe it, or at least believe that Trump is “Putin’s stooge” and that every piece of bad information that comes out about the current White House is “Russian disinformation.”

The Mueller Report was what Trump’s enemies—which included a lot of powerful Republicans—hoped to use to impeach him. But after spending $40 million, all Robert Mueller’s team could come up with is that the Trump campaign had not colluded with Russia, but they had obstructed justice.

And what did they mean by “obstructed justice”? I read The Mueller Report when it came out several years ago and what they cited was that Trump’s Twitter criticisms of some of those testifying against him could be construed as “witness intimidation.”

I suppose, if you tap-dance enough, you can find a way that legally justify that conclusion. What it really showed was that you can find a way to accuse anyone of “obstruction of justice.” It’s the charge that is the last refuge of the legal scoundrel.

The great Mollie Hemingway over at The Federalist, said it best when she said that Trump was accused of “protesting too hard that he was being falsely accused of treason.” For that alone, every Democrat, along with Mitt Romney in the Senate, decided Trump should be impeached.

It was a revealing moment—the obstruction of justice count showed that the Establishment really believes that our job, when they accuse us of something is to just shut up and take it. That Establishment belief would explode into broader view when they locked down the economy just a couple years later.

The Russia Collusion Conspiracy Theory revealed a lot. In later years, we would find out that prominent Republicans, including the late John McCain, along with Paul Ryan (who was still Speaker of the House when the Mueller investigation began) already knew that the infamous Steele Dossier—material paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and used as the basis for the investigation—was a hoax.

Yet McCain, Ryan, and other Republicans stood back and let Democrats tear the country apart and paralyze the Commander-in-Chief’s ability to act on the world stage. And the consequences of their treachery have come home to roost today.

One part of Trump’s foreign affairs agenda was the hopes for a better relationship with Russia. In this, he wasn’t unique—Barack Obama had famously responded to Romney’s Cold War nostalgia in a 2012 debate by saying “the 1980s are calling and they want their foreign policy back.” But in the bigger picture, Obama proved unable or unwilling to push back against the forces  that benefit from keeping the West stuck in Cold War thinking, and Obama’s CIA would instigate what has proven to be a disastrous coup in Ukraine, back in 2014.

By using Russia as the cudgel to assault Trump—an assault that begin literally within hours of his election—the political Establishment was making it virtually impossible for Trump to deal with Putin. It became necessary for Trump to repeatedly emphasize the steps he was taking against Russia.

Trump still achieved a lot—simply by stopping the talk of Ukraine joining NATO, he took a vital piece of pressure off Putin. That carrot, combined with several other sticks, including his “peace through strength” approach to the military, is likely why Putin did not invade anywhere during Trump’s term—by contrast, Putin moved on Crimea in 2015 and Ukraine in 2022.

But the possibility of breaking through Cold War nostalgia and recasting the global stage would be impossible—because of the constraints imposed by the Russia Collusion Conspiracy Theory, and the willingness of large parts of the country to believe it.

Windows of opportunity don’t stay open forever, and any possibility that may have existed with Russia is now gone. Even if Trump wins in November, he will inherit a very different world than the one that existed in January 2017—a world with fewer possibilities for the United States.

Our refusal to move relations with Russia beyond the Cold War has resulted in an immense humanitarian catastrophe in Ukraine and continues every day. The half-million or so dead Ukrainians, the forced conscriptions by the Ukraine government, and the migrant crisis it’s triggered across Eastern Europe are reason enough to see why U.S. policy is a monumental disaster.

But if we pull the camera back and look at Putin’s moves, the situation gets even worse. In the the two-plus years since the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian leader has done the following:

*Formed an alliance with China. This ended over 50 years of U.S. success, going back to Richard Nixon, at keeping the world’s two other great powers separate. Now, the United States is on the wrong side of a 2-against-1 fight.

*Armed the Houthi insurgents, whose attacks have been successful at shutting down key U.S. shipping lanes and helped contribute to the rising cost of living.

*Just recently visited North Korea and formed a new partnership. This ends the détente, however uneasy, that Trump had forged with a country that is small, but has a viable nuclear program. Putin vowed to give North Korean president Kim Il-Jong long-range weapons, and there were recently reports that just such a weapon was test-fired.

*In the last week, Putin has formed another strategic partnership with Iran. This comes at a time when the possibility of Iran and Israel going to war seems to grow each day. The partnership likely means more purchases of Iranian oil and an enrichment of their economy—wealth they have used in the past to fund terrorism around the world.

*The BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) coalition is forging ahead with plans for a new currency, to wean off reliance on the dollar. BRICS is attracting new members every day, who no longer want to rely on the United States. This is a long-game move, but it’s hard not to see BRICS rising as an alternative to NATO and the West.

That’s the diplomatic context that has followed NATO’s incitement of the Ukraine invasion. The reports are that Putin has simply decided to move beyond the “post-Cold War” period in global history. With U.S. policymakers in both parties stuck in the thinking of the actual Cold War, that means Putin—along with Xi in China—are two steps ahead of us. That’s why the global South is starting to line up with them, and not with us.

Those who accused America Firsters of being “isolationist” have ironically succeeded in isolating the U.S. and the rest of NATO out on an island. It comes in the context of Russia having made two recent direct threats against the United States, which were discussed in our video here last week following what passed for a presidential debate.  U.S. isolation also comes in the context of Iran vowing total war with Israel if the latter attacks Hezbollah.

And our isolation comes in the context of Putin having further upped the ante just the last couple of days, by informing Israel that if they continue to aid Ukraine, Russia will take action. Given that the U.S. consistently does what the Israeli government wants, the odds we would be drawn into any war that started between Russia/Iran and Israel are high indeed—all the while our border is wide-open.

In the broader post-Cold War context, this means that those in the United States who wanted Russia to continue being our enemy have won. They have gotten their way. We’ll all have to live with whatever consequences come with that.

And in the narrower context of the Trump Era, this means that the Russia Collusion Conspiracy Theory prevented an American president from escaping this morass.

To those who believed all lies about the Trump and Russia, consider this—the same people who told you that are the same people who have been telling you for four years that Joe Biden had the mental competency to be president. You have 90 minutes of indisputable video evidence from last Thursday night attesting to this corporate media mendacity.

That mendacity has led us to whatever happens next with Russia. It’s up to you as to whether you’ll consider that maybe they’ve been lying to you about other subjects too.

It’s absolutely true that Christ is the only one who can solve our problems. And, as foretold at Fatima 107 years ago, it’s the Immaculate Heart of His Mother that is our refuge in times of storm. But God typically (though not always) works through human instruments.

And in the coming presidential race—regardless of who the Democrats end up putting forward—there is only one candidate who has consistently shown the desire to find a peaceful solution to these wars, to get us out of old ways of thinking, and who has the negotiating skills and chops implement it.

I don’t care whether you consider yourself liberal, conservative or something in between. I don’t care what your thoughts are on personality issues. There’s only one question to ask between now and November 5—who has the desire and ability to get us out of World War III.