President Donald Trump often accuses others of his own bad behavior, but former Republican strategist Rick Wilson argued that his devaluation of the "traitor" slur is significant and dangerous.
Trump often accuses his critics and political rivals of treason, but Wilson argued in a new Rolling Stone column that the president and his apologists have betrayed the U.S. to defend an un-American administration.
"As the impeachment hearings have worn on and as evidence of the complete moral collapse of the Republican Party has become more and more evident, it has become quite obvious there really are traitors among us," Wilson wrote. "There are elected officials who have made the decision to protect a corrupt president by embracing conspiracy theories, refusing to acknowledge sworn testimony of career foreign-service officials, and piling on to Trump’s attack of democratic institutions."
Wilson argued that Trump apologists openly display their treason on cable TV, as they laugh and giggle about their betrayal of American values in service of a corrupt president.
"The traitors — be they United States senators like John Kennedy and Lindsey Graham or columnists from the Federalist, Breitbart, and a slurry of other formally conservative media outlets — repeat the Kremlin-approved propaganda messages and tropes of that warfare, word for word," he wrote.
GOP traitors defend Trump's "f*ck you, pay me" ethos and White House stonewalling of the impeachment inquiry, Wilson argued, and they openly boast of their allegiance to Russia's president Vladimir Putin.
"You can spot the traitors simply by watching their television shows, as they look you in the eye and tell you to your face they side with Russia," Wilson wrote. "Tucker Carlson wasn’t winking and nodding to the camera; it was where he’s landed politically — a pro-Putin schill on a network that looks away from their pet president’s grotesque subservience to the Russian leader who helped elect him."
"If you can’t spot the treason yet, you will soon enough. That’s the thing about spies, traitors, and those who betray their country — they rarely stay hidden forever," he added.
