Betrayers

David Rothkopf's Traitor: A History of American Betrayal from Benedict Arnold to Donald Trump is a howl of rage against the 45th president's crimes. It's also an inclusive history of a rogue's gallery of men (they are almost all men) who did the country wrong in the past, from Benedict Arnold who sold out to the Brits in the Revolution, to Jefferson Davis who chose to rebel along with his home state against the Union, to the poet Ezra Pound who broadcast propaganda for the Nazis. It's a good once-over-lightly survey of these betrayers of their nation.

But Rothkopf's book runs smack into the difficulty of sticking the appellation "traitor" on anyone in this country. The authors of the Constitution wrote a very narrow definition of treason:

"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. ..."

Under this formula, you don't have "treason" unless some state is making war on the United States and the "traitor" joins the attack.

Legal commentators stress that the founders were trying to prevent what they'd known under the king -- broad "treason" charges aimed at opponents.  

While the Constitution’s Framers shared the centuries-old view that all citizens owed a duty of loyalty to their home nation, they included the Treason Clause not so much to underscore the seriousness of such a betrayal, but to guard against the historic use of treason prosecutions by repressive governments to silence otherwise legitimate political opposition.

In strict Constitutional terms, Donald Trump is not a traitor. 

And in ordinary everyday terms, I think that is right.

Trump is just a canny swindler who took advantage of pre-existing pathologies in U.S. society and in our electoral structures to win executive office. His kind of hustler has no allegiance to country or to anything else except his own greed and individual insecurities. And his family and the posse of second-rate con artists who surround him are more of the same; they can't be said to violate any allegiance to country because there's no evidence they ever had any. So the name "traitor" is not quite right. They are all just small time crooks, unfortunately and accidentally elevated to positions in which they have been able to make out like the bandits they are.

But there is one rogue in Trump's entourage who comes a little closer to the everyday understanding of treason. That's Michael Flynn; after all, this one had managed to climb to the rank of Lieutenant General in the US army. We expect loyalty to something besides self from products of the military personnel system. Flynn apparently monetized his rank and experience, working not only for Donald Trump but also apparently being open to corrupt relationships with Russia's Putin and Turkey's Erdogan. When the Mueller investigation brought him to court for sentencing for admittedly lying to the FBI (don't ever do that!), Judge Emmet Sullivan, who had the opportunity to read the full unredacted account of Flynn's doings which the rest of us have never seen, burst out injudiciously, "arguably, you sold out your country." Sullivan took criticism for being so blunt, but his reaction to Flynn's betrayal of military ethics seems refreshingly authentic.

Naturally Trump has pardoned Flynn and the former general is now running around suggesting that Trump should fix his loss of the 2020 election by imposing martial law. I suppose that's protected First Amendment speech ... but it sure looks like additional treasonous behavior to me.

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Eleanor Clift has pointed out that, even after January 20, Donald Trump might have a unique residual opportunity to make money off the office he used to occupy. Apparently it has been the custom (though not required) to make secret intelligence briefings available to ex-presidents. I wonder how much some of Trump's strongmen buddies would pay for up-to-date U.S. spy briefings? Clift hopes Biden will call a halt this opportunity for betrayal for cash:

The decision to pull the plug falls to the new president—and Joe Biden shouldn’t hesitate to cut him off in a New York minute. ... It’s not hard to imagine Trump picking up the phone and calling Putin, or any of the other dictatorial leaders he’s friendly with, and spilling secrets accidentally—or deliberately. “The concern hypothetically would be that he could provide classified information to someone who shouldn’t receive it, that might endear him to a foreign power where he has properties or a foreign power that has some control over his ability to service his debts,” says [Ohio State law professor Dakota] Rudesill. “There’s so much about his finances that we don’t know.”

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David Rothkopf is a former editor of Foreign Policy magazine where he made surprising amounts of room for critics of American empire. In the Trump era, he created Deep State Radio which has served up realistic and horrifying, but nonetheless somehow comforting, commentary on the Trump shit show -- despite an abiding affection for a bygone U.S. international "leadership" which often looked a lot less benign to its objects than it did to its practitioners.