Those are my reasons I voted for him, and I suspect that its the same for a lot of other people. None of it had to do with Russia.
OK, I appreciate you taking the time to spell out your reasons for supporting Trump.
Sorry for still another "novel", but I'll try and make this my last effort to describe my perspective.
I believe we are a sovereign nation. From Wikipedia:
Sovereignty is the full right and power of a governing body over itself, without any interference from outside sources or bodies. In political theory,
sovereignty is a substantive term designating supreme authority over some polity.
John McCain was very blunt in describing Russian interference in our sovereignty. He called it an "act of war". He was describing it that way in 2016.
I understand that the United States has interfered in the sovereignty of other nations. Some of the impetus behind the exodus from the so-called Northern Triangle of Central American nations can be traced to our own interference there in the 20th century.
Nonetheless, I find I cannot just apply the "what goes around, comes around" perspective to Russian interference in our sovereignty as a nation, even as I have been, at times, an opponent of our own imperial machinations during my lifetime. Too many friends killed, or tormented for the remainder of their lives, because of the Vietnam war, for instance.
Donald Trump fought tooth and nail to not apply sanctions against Russia for their blatant interference in our sovereignty and in the central institution of our political system: our elections. Donald Trump stood before the world, with Putin smiling at his side, at Helsinki, and pronounced he chose to believe Putin when told that Putin and Russia had not interfered in those 2016 elections.
Nobody ever said we need to go to war with Russia. But to not defend the nation he was elected to lead, as the Commander in Chief, was to let down every American who expected our head of state to represent our nation. He failed.
And despite his Big Lie of "total and complete exoneration", and yes, I mean Big Lie in the Orwellian sense, we have every right, as citizens of the United States, to understand the source reasons for this deference to the leader of a mafia state who makes no secret of his desire to weaken Western liberal democracies. Whatever our flaws, including those of our political leadership, (if one chooses to view the Clintons as the epitome of corruption, for example), they are OUR flaws, and we cannot simply lay down meekly while our chief geopolitical foe for the past 70 years, commits, as McCain said, an "act of war": to interfere in our sovereignty as a nation.
I expect our president to act in our interest in the face of such an attack. For reasons of his own, he has consistently behaved as if defending his nation goes against his grain, where Putin and Russia is concerned. I find that unacceptable, and I want to know exactly what is behind this deference. I do not accept his Big Lie.
