Donald Trump won. His critics would be better off to forget the Moscow-centred conspiracy theories aimed at explaining his upset victory and acknowledge this fact.

He may turn out to be a disastrous U.S. president. But he’s the one that Americans, using their idiosyncratic method of electing presidents, chose.

That makes him the legitimate winner. The world should deal with it. Alas, his critics are choosing instead to challenge his legitimacy.

They began by pointing out Trump didn’t win the popular vote. Indeed, as ballot-counting nears completion, he is trailing Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent, by about 2.8-million votes.

But George W. Bush and three other U.S. presidents didn’t win the popular vote either.

All did, however, win enough electoral college votes to clinch the presidency. And under the U.S. system, which is weighted in favour of less populous states, this is all that counts.

Now the critics are seizing on Russia’s alleged involvement in the campaign.

The suggestion first surfaced earlier this year after hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton’s election campaign were made public.

Some of those emails revealed attempts by the Democratic establishment to scupper the candidacy of Bernie Sanders, Clinton’s sole challenger for her party’s nomination. Others revealed the text of frank speeches she had made to Wall Street financiers.

But most were merely mildly embarrassing to senior members of her campaign.

More to the point, the Clinton email leaks appeared to have had little lasting effect on her popularity as measured by public opinion polls.

But the leaks took on greater significance in October, after U.S. intelligence agencies said they had concluded Russia was behind the entire business.

Had Clinton won the election, little more might have come of this. But she didn’t and now Moscow’s role has become a cause célèbre.

The idea of Trump as Moscow stooge got a boost last week after the CIA told select senators that Russia was deliberately trying to help the Republican candidate win.

According to the New York Times, the spy agency has no concrete proof of Moscow’s intentions. There is no smoking gun.

Moreover, the FBI, according to the Times, does not share the CIA’s certainty. It believes Russia orchestrated the hacking but thinks Moscow’s motive may have been merely to denigrate the U.S. electoral system.

Certainly, it is possible the Russians were trying to influence the election’s outcome. Big powers do that kind of thing. The U.S., for instance, has routinely interfered in Central and South American politics. In 2000, the CIA issued a document detailing its involvement in Chilean elections all the way back to 1961.

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That involvement ran the gamut from propaganda to coup-planning and assassination.

As well, Britain’s Guardian newspaper has detailed American government attempts to sway elections in Serbia (2000), Belarus (2001), Georgia (2003) and Ukraine (2005).

Operating through third-party agencies, Washington provided funds and expertise to promote leaders deemed suitable to the West. In every case except that of Belarus, the U.S. efforts succeeded.

In 2011, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Clinton, at that time U.S. Secretary of State, of fomenting antiregime protests in Moscow.

So it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that Russia was playing tit-for-tat in the Clinton-Trump contest. If so, however, Moscow’s attempts to influence the outcome appear singularly lame.

The most politically significant leak in the campaign did not come from a hacked Democratic National Committee email repeating inside-the-Beltway gossip. Rather it was the release of an audio tape detailing Trump’s views on women.

Similarly, the most damaging event in the Clinton campaign — the announcement that her emails were once again under investigation — was not orchestrated by a Russian intelligence agency. It was orchestrated by an American intelligence agency, the FBI.

There is much about Trump that worries much of the world. He has unorthodox views on trade. He is casual about the use of torture. He has questioned America’s military alliances, including NATO.

He favours better relations with Russia, as does Exxon Mobil chief Rex Tillerson, his nominee for secretary of state.

Still, Trump is as legitimate as anyone who has occupied the White House. A lot of Americans may detest him. But he is their president. Whether they like it or not, he speaks for their country.

Thomas Walkom appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

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