The current hysteria is what we have been experiencing for two years. It drowns out, and in many ways delegitimizes, honest criticism.

I watched the Trump-Putin press conference on Monday morning, then spent almost 8 hours in the car with only terrestrial news radio, when available.

When I finally arrived and had a chance to catch up on Twitter and replays of cable news, it was obvious that I re-entered a world divorced from the reality that most people hear, which is short news bites while going about their lives.

Yet on Journalist and Resistance Twitter, on CNN and MSNBC, and among many Democrat politicians, the same people who called Trump a traitor since the day he was elected, and in some cases before he was elected, were still calling him a traitor, but even more loudly. A congressman called for the military to intervene. There were demands that all senior officials in the administration resign, and that Trump himself resign.

There were, of course, more reasoned and serious criticisms, including by people who support Trump. But reasoned criticisms of Trump are few and far between.

The current hysteria is what we have been experiencing for two years. It drowns out, and in many ways delegitimizes, honest criticism. It’s certainly fair to criticize some of Trump’s answers at the press conference, where he seemed to draw an equivalence between the assessments of the U.S. intelligence community and Putin’s denial of election interference.

But that’s not “treason” as many are shouting. And answers at a press conference do not give Democrats and Trump haters a mulligan to redo the election.

If anything, Trump objectively has been tougher on the Russians than his predecessor. When Trump pushed the NATO countries to increase their defense spending to better defend against Russia, and attacked Germany for a pipeline deal that would enrich Russia and give Russia a stranglehold over Germany, Trump also was accused of treason even though his actions objectively were anti-Russian.

Understand that, while there are some people fairly concerned that Trump’s press conference performance did damage, the overwhelming chorus of treason-accusers and meltdown-instigators is simply a continuation of the slow coup against the election result we have witnessed continuously since the election.

My advice: Carry on.



