David A. Graham: America is fine with collusion

It’s no surprise, then, that Trump would not foreswear a tactic that worked for him then. Rather, every indication is that the president’s electoral behavior will be worse in 2020, and there will be fewer constraints on him.

First, as the interview with Stephanopoulos showed, Trump is effectively already actively soliciting foreign assistance in 2020. In the 2016 race, he was a long-shot candidate, and Russia took a serious risk by aggressively helping him. That bet paid off with Trump’s win, and the divisions in America that have followed; the repercussions for Russia have been relatively minor, and the president himself refuses to blame the Kremlin.

Trump openly telling Stephanopoulos he’d look at help and not report it to the FBI is as good as a request for bids. Where before many foreigners viewed him as an uncouth businessman with no chance at the Oval Office, Trump is now the president of the United States, and he’s offering a simple way to curry favor with him. He’s also promising he won’t take any concerns to law enforcement.

This morning, as the backlash to his comments gathered force, Trump argued that his comments had been misconstrued. “I meet and talk to ‘foreign governments’ every day,” he tweeted. “I just met with the Queen of England (U.K.), the Prince of Wales, the P.M. of the United Kingdom, the P.M. of Ireland, the President of France and the President of Poland. We talked about ‘Everything!’ Should I immediately call the FBI about these calls and meetings?”

That’s a red herring. Trump is either unable to tell the difference between diplomatic conversations in his capacity as head of government and electoral interference by the intelligence agencies of a hostile foreign power, or he is unwilling to do so. This fits with a pattern of Trump conflating the national interest with his own personal interests.

There’s no need to deal in hypotheticals: Not only would Trump hear out foreign countries offering aid, he’s arguably already doing so. In May, The Washington Post reported, the Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani—who has been seeking to dig up damaging information about the Biden family—met in New York with a former Ukrainian diplomat who has made unsubstantiated allegations against the Democratic National Committee. Sub in Donald Trump Jr. for Giuliani and Russia for Ukraine, and it’s a rerun of the notorious June 2016 Trump Tower meeting. The Trump campaign is returning to the same playbook. Giuliani also planned a trip to Ukraine, before canceling it over objections from the State Department, according to the Post.

And Trump can now run that playbook without as much fear of repercussion. The president’s understanding of the FBI is peculiar. He reacted strongly when Stephanopoulos asked him about the agency, offering a mob-style revulsion to snitching: “I don’t think in my whole life I’ve ever called the FBI. In my whole life. You don’t call the FBI.” This disdainful attitude toward federal law enforcement is especially strange given that Trump is now the nation’s top law-enforcement officer. (It’s also bizarre given that in 1981, Trump offered to “fully cooperate” with the bureau.)