One of the big news stories recently has been a statement President Trump made about probably accepting opposition research material from a foreign country in a future election. This story has been blown completely out of perspective. ABC's George Stephanopoulos asked Trump the question:
Somebody comes up and says, ‘Hey, I have information on your opponent.’ Do you call the FBI?
If I were the candidate faced with this situation, I would listen. After hearing the information from the foreign source and seeing any evidence I would evaluate the credibility of the story before deciding to contact the FBI. If the story is completely unsubstantiated and sounds a bit over the top, I wouldn't call the FBI and would completely forget about the story. If the story was substantiated and sounded plausible, yes I would call the FBI.
What the majority of the press is saying is we should ignore information about a candidate if the source is a foreign country. This is ridiculous. When we are electing officials we deserve to have all the information we can get on the candidates, regardless of the source.
The press is saying information obtained from a foreign source is collusion. Again this is a ridiculous assertion. Collusion is defined as
secret or illegal cooperation or conspiracy, especially in order to cheat or deceive others.
After hearing the opposition research, if I make my campaign speeches and say here's some information on my opponent provided by this foreign government, which has been relayed to the FBI, this isn't collusion. There is no secret and I am certainly not working to cheat or deceive anyone. As voters, this could be information on our favored candidate that would make us reconsider our vote.
Someone walking up to a candidate offering information on their opponent is not collusion. The offer of information does not reach the level of "cooperation or conspiracy" required by the definition of collusion. The question asked by Stephanopoulos was a setup from the start. A setup that showed it's ability to generate article after article from the mainstream press ridiculing President Trump.
Through all of this the majority of the mainstream press ignored other stories along the same lines. Compare President Trump's answer to a hypothetical question to the actions of the Clinton Campaign and the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 campaign.
The Clinton Campaign and the DNC funded Christopher Steele to put together a dossier on President Trump using Russian intelligence. To keep this secret, money from the DNC and Clinton Campaign was funneled through a law firm, a opposition research firm, and finally to Steele. The funding of the Steele dossier was kept secret until it could be used to get approval for further surveillance on the Trump Campaign, even though the information in the dossier could not be confirmed. This eventually led to a Special Counsel investigation of Trump-Russia collusion lasting over two years and finding no evidence of collusion between the Trump Campaign and the Russians.
In addition to this bit of collusion, the DNC coordinated opposition research into the Trump campaign with the Ukrainian Embassy. Alexandria Chalupa, was an operative working for the DNC assigned to do "ethnic outreach" for the Democratic Party by working with the Ukrainian Embassy. As part of this "ethnic outreach", Chalupa met with high ranking officials at the Ukrainian Embassy to try to obtain information about connections between members of the Trump Campaign and the Russian Government. To date, the DNC has denied it was ever in contact with the Ukrainian government. Again secret cooperation with a foreign government the press doesn't see fit to call out as collusion.
The real collusion threatening our American republic (not democracy), is the collusion between the mainstream press and the Democratic National Committee. Honest, reliable information on our candidates should be taken from anywhere we can get it. We can all be assured the source of any honest, reliable information probably won't be coming from the mainstream press.
