Democrats have resisted openly questioning Donald Trump’s legitimacy as the next president — despite Vladimir Putin’s efforts to get him elected, now acknowledged by Trump himself.

But the party is finding it increasingly difficult to hold back.


Democrats are struggling with how far to go in exploiting Trump’s Russia troubles for political gain — wary of prolonging election-year acrimony and undermining confidence in American democracy, but tempted to try to maximize their chances of making Trump a one-term president.

The dilemma was heightened by this week’s explosive reports about Russia possibly obtaining compromising information on Trump, which he flatly denied at a news conference Wednesday. Where the party ends up could say a lot about how Democrats intend to mount a comeback from their shocking defeat at Trump’s hands in November.

For now, at least, they’re trying to straddle a middle ground, saying it’s up to Trump to prove his legitimacy with his own actions. That means backing stronger sanctions against Russia and allowing a full investigation into its apparent election meddling instead of bashing U.S. intelligence agencies and lavishing praise on Russian leader Putin.

“It casts a shadow over the presidency,” Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) said in an interview. While Russia’s cyber-intrusion into the election “doesn’t change the outcome of the Electoral College,” he added, it does demonstrate that “there is no mandate for Trump’s vision or policies for America. He lost the popular vote — that’s the citizens’ vote — by a huge margin.”

Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) was more direct in his challenge to Trump’s “bizarre and so otherwise inexplicable” refusal to agree with the intelligence community’s findings that Russia mounted a campaign to hurt Hillary Clinton’s chances of winning the White House.

“What is the nature of your compulsion to deny and to avoid this conversation?” Connolly said he would like to ask Trump. He warned Republicans who have sidestepped Trump’s friendliness toward Russia that “you put yourself at great peril depending on subsequent facts” by embracing any “rationalization of this Russian interference and possible troubling relationship between the president-elect and Putin.”

So far, House Democrats are more willing than their Senate counterparts to assert that Trump’s presidential victory has lost credibility due to Russian meddling. Even before Trump’s Russia troubles deepened late Tuesday, two members of House Democratic leadership wryly nicknamed him “Moscow Donald” during a news conference.

“This was the most un-American election ever,” said Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), a member of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, which oversees human rights in the region.

If Trump commits to “stronger sanctions” against Russia, Cohen added, “I think people would feel comfortable that he would put America first. It would maybe limit people’s concerns that there was a relationship with Russia that was unhealthy that we don’t know about. People think Putin had something on him.”

California Rep. Eric Swalwell, who’s helped lead a Democratic push for an independent commission to investigate Russian hacking, said lawmakers should not worry about appearing to try to invalidate the results of the election because there is no evidence that Trump’s campaign coordinated with Russia.

“There’s a fear that, if you acknowledge it, you’re putting an asterisk on our president-elect, and that’s really a short-sighted way of looking at this,” Swalwell said in an interview. “It’s only an asterisk if there was any collaboration.”

Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle have called for further investigation into links between Trump emissaries and Russia, however. FBI Director James Comey said during Senate testimony Tuesday that he could neither confirm nor deny a probe of alleged coordination between Trump allies and Russia.

“He can legitimize himself by being forthcoming about his global interests,” Swalwell said, reviving long-running Democratic insistence that Trump follow presidential precedent and release his tax returns.

Senior Democrats are renewing their push for an independent, bipartisan commission to probe Russia’s meddling following the revelation, first reported by CNN, that U.S. intelligence officials briefed Trump on Russia’s alleged attempts to collect compromising information on him. Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said Wednesday that Trump’s friendliness toward Russia is “even more worrisome” in light of the reports, acknowledging they remain uncorroborated.

“The allegation that an American president could be susceptible to blackmail by a hostile foreign government is historic and deeply troubling,” Durbin said in a statement. “It makes the resistance of Republican leaders in the Senate and House to a fulsome investigation all the more inexplicable.”

Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen says Russia's preference for Donald Trump in the November election is not in dispute. | AP Photo

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), chairman of Senate Democrats’ campaign committee, said in a Tuesday interview before the CNN report that while “it’s unknowable to what extent Russian interference affected the outcome” of the election, Moscow’s preference for Trump isn’t in dispute.

“What we do know is they were working hard to elect Donald Trump and try to disqualify Hillary Clinton, and that means it’s really important that we not only shine a light on what happened,” Van Hollen said, “but that we protect our electoral system and we sanction the Russians.”

Several Democrats steered clear of questioning Trump’s validity. Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, one of several Democrats who joined four Republican senators Tuesday on a new Russia sanctions bill, said the Putin regime’s involvement in the election was critical — not what that involvement says about Trump’s victory.

“I don’t even pass an opinion on whether it affected the legitimacy of his election,” Menendez said.

Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) offered a road map for his party’s messaging efforts, blaming Trump for putting his own legitimacy at risk by resisting intelligence reports and underscoring Democrats’ interest in a bipartisan process.

“What undermines the incoming president is his unwillingness to agree with the intelligence community,” Schatz said in an interview. “There are very few serious members of Congress who are using this to question the legitimacy of the president-elect, but there are very many people on both sides who want to get to the bottom of this — not for the purpose of re-litigating 2016, but for the purpose of protecting our republic.”