In Helsinki and in front of the whole world, President Trump watched Russian President Vladimir Putin lecture an American reporter about democracy. A better leader would have made him eat his words.
“I believe Russia is a democratic state and I hope you’re not denying this right to your own country,” the former KGB officer told the AP when asked about electoral meddling. “Do you believe the U.S. is a democracy?” Because if it is a democracy, Putin preened, the issue should be dealt with in court.
The only court Putin should become familiar with is the one at The Hague. He is a war criminal who murdered women and children to start the Second Chechen War and assure his rise to power. Four buildings were blown up in Buinaksk, Moscow, and Volgodonsk in September 19, 1999. Chechen terrorists were blamed. Russian tanks rolled across the Terek River the next day.
The whole thing was a sham. As Victor Davis Hanson noted years ago at National Review, Russian agents were caught placing a bomb in a fifth building in Southeast Moscow and Gennady Seleznev, the leader of the Russian legislature, announced the bombings three days before the bombs blew.
Normal democratic behavior includes things like campaigns, debates, and peaceful elections. It doesn’t include turning apartment buildings into rubble to manufacture an exploitable political crisis.
If anyone doubts that Putin murdered his own people to further his career, no worries. The wannabe strongman still shouldn’t presume to lecture on democratic norms after murdering journalists and rivals.
Maybe Trump missed this affront because democracy has become a popular buzzword. Of the 192 countries on the current globe, 123 identify as democratic whether or not they actually live up to it. But free government is the exception to the historical rule. It doesn’t happen often in the course of human history that the government exists for the benefit of the governed.
It is more than a national security threat that Russians meddled in our election. It is an affront. We didn’t invent democracy but we made it modern and we made it work. Our Constitution has been an example to the world and our experiment in peaceful transitions of power is downright miraculous. A better president would know this and would have told Putin to shove it.
We should be ashamed Trump didn’t say anything.
[Also read: Democrat says it’s ‘likely’ Putin has dirt on Trump]
