This is all bad enough, but the truly dangerous part is this question: What if President Trump gets away with it? It’s clear enough now that Trump doesn’t care a fig whether colluding with Russia is bad for America or not. The only thing that matters to these people is whether they get caught. And now that they’ve been caught, the only thing that matters to them is staying in power.

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And what does Trump staying in power mean to the rest of us? It means this: Trump continuing to build a presidency that consists of a minority of voters who, like him, don’t care anything about the truth. And to finish the job of making the Republican Party into nothing but a Trump support system that doesn’t care about truth either, only loyalty. And to accept the help of a particular television network to become the muscle of his propaganda machine.

But we knew much of this before. Now that it has become unmistakable, and undeniable, it is a test of whether we join in with the Trump crew and his party of enablers in looking the other way. Imagine, if you will, what Trump escaping accountability means. How do you imagine he will behave if this, like everything before it, fails to stop him?

At every point of Trump’s rise, people have assumed that common sense and real patriotism would put an end to his relentless pursuit of power and privilege. And how has that worked out so far? We have Trump as president of the United States. So far that has meant Trump trampling on the governing norms of our republic, on the aspirations and policy preferences of the majority of voters, on the truth, on what’s left of the free press, on science, on the climate, on health care and on the last vestiges of economic equality of American citizens.