Two days ago Donald Trump, Jr.,  the dim bulb son of a feckless father,  admitted that during the 2016 Campaign that he had gone to a meeting with a Russian National, who supposedly had damning information about Hillary Clinton, supplied by the Russian Government to aid the Trump campaign. He was accompanied by Paul Manafort, the Trump Campaign Chairman and Jared Kushner,  the Trump Campaign’s Senior Advisor. Just two hours ago little Donnie tweeted:

“Media & Dems are extremely invested in the Russia story. If this nonsense meeting is all they have after a yr, I understand the desperation!”

That Junior is unable to understand why there are serious implications about this meeting that begin at impropriety and end at treasonous criminality, is a factor of his own clueless mentality, accompanied by a long Republican history of treasonous Presidential Campaign activity.  Republican apologists have been quite active in these past few days pretending that this meeting is nothing out of the ordinary and that “Librul” partisans are merely taking out their frustrations because they lost the election.

Let’s be clear though,  official Campaign staff meeting with an agent of a foreign (hostile) government intent upon influencing an American Presidential election is treasonous behavior. The entire edifice of America’s claim to be an “exceptional” nation due to its’ Constitution and Democratic election process,  is undermined if foreign entities are given free reign to interfere with and influence our election process.  While Trump supporters and Republican politicians act as if there is nothing wrong with that “foreign influence”,  the simple fact is that electoral influence ALWAYS goes hand in hand with a quid pro quo.  Only someone in a stupor, or in denial, would see the change demanded in the 2016 Republican Platform on the Ukraine as having nothing to do with paying off the Russians for their assistance. Republicans adopted pro-Russia stance on Ukraine as Trump officials met with Russian ambassador.

This of course wasn’t the only evidence of a quid pro quo with the Russians, as it seems our incompetent, yet malignant President has continually bent over backwards to heap praise upon the Russian Republic and the murderous Dictator who leads it.  This servile pandering to a foreign Despot, intent on making his kleptocracy a World Power, is at its’ most positive interpretation dangerous to our nation, but in its’ most realistic interpretation,  treasonous behavior by our President, by those who serve him and by the Congressional Republicans trying to provide him justification. What seems to go missing in almost all the media reports of this treasonous behavior is providing the context that this is not the first time this has occurred in the annals of Republicans working to attain the Presidency and on two momentous occasions they achieved their goal..

The Presidential Election of 1968 was among the most turbulent in American history, because of the widespread and militant opposition to the Vietnam War.  Lyndon B. Johnson had won the Presidency in a landslide over ultra-Conservative  Barry Goldwater and pushed through the 1964 Voting Rights Act,  causing great displeasure in the still officially segregated Southern States.  LBJ’s escalation in Vietnam added to his nationwide unpopularity, as the Anti-War Movement burgeoned in numbers and in activity.  Ever the consummate politician Johnson recognized that his re-election was in peril and decided not to run, but to devote all his efforts to attaining Peace in Vietnam,  thus burnishing his Presidential legacy.  The mechanism for this Peace effort was the Paris Peace Talks which brought together all parties in the conflict in order to reach an accord.  LBJ forced the South Vietnamese government to the table in Paris by dint of the fact that the U.S. had been propping up this corrupt and unpopular government for years.  Substantial progress towards ending the conflict was being made and that caused Republican Presidential candidate Richard Nixon to fear electoral defeat.  He and his campaign dispatched Henry Kissinger,  who was already playing a semi-official diplomatic role,  to meet with South Vietnamese Government officials.  The message from Nixon was to hold out making any agreement until his election,  at which time he would get them a much more favorable deal.  The South Vietnamese agreed, the talks were stalemated and Nixon was elected and immediately violently escalated the war.  The result was 6 more years of devastating warfare,  the loss of hundreds of thousands of Southeast Asian lives, the death of tens of thousands of American troops and the maiming of tens of thousands of their fellows. This devastating treason by Nixon and his cohorts became a mere footnote to the Watergate Scandal,  which caused his resignation.  The details of Watergate actually paled when compared to the deaths and destruction caused by interfering in the peace talks, which was outright treason.

In the 1980 Presidential Election, the incumbent President Jimmy Carter was burdened by the continuing spectacle of the Iranian Hostage Crisis:

Where ” Fifty-two American diplomats and citizens were held hostage for 444 days from November 4, 1979, to January 20, 1981 after a group of Iranian students belonging to the Muslim Student Followers of the Imam’s Line, who supported the Iranian Revolution, took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.[3] It stands as the longest hostage crisis in recorded history.”

Members of the team of Ronald Reagan,  the Ultra Conservative Republican Candidate,  including George H.W. Bush and Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, met in secret with representatives of the Iranian rebels to promise them arms and a more favorable deal to conclude the standoff.  Carter, the beleaguered incumbent,  unsuccessful in ending the crisis, lost to Reagan and in a startling display of Non-Coincidence,  the 51 hostages were released on the day of Reagan’s Inauguration.  The seamy details of this treasonous behavior trickled  years later in the Iran-Contra Affair and while some went to jail, the lasting damage of electing a President through treason with a foreign entity was never healed.

It seems the history of treasonous behavior by Republican Partisans, represents a paradigm of their Party going back at least almost 50 years.  That our illegitimate President was unaware of this treasonous activity on his behalf seems highly unlikely,  given how he has spent so much time in the past year extolling the virtues of the Russian Republic and its’ Dictator Vladimir Putin.  The most important question now is will the Republican Party in power,  which glorifies in proffering its‘ patriotism,  act against this treasonous behavior and the ongoing Presidential quid pro quo?