But negotiation becomes tougher politically when liberal commentators on MSNBC characterize Russia as "an adversarial, aggressive power" and suggest conspiratorially that it might start a war to throw the 2016 election. (It didn't.)
11. Fight oligarchy, not each other.
These Russia claims may turn out to be true or they may turn on the ones who are peddling them. It's like the saying goes: sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes the bear eats you.
Here's a better way to fight Trump: No less an authority than Simon Johnson, former chief economist for the International Monetary Fund (IMF), wrote a Project Syndicate essay headlined "Trump's Extreme Oligarchy."
Johnson concluded that Trump's "American oligarchs" will "offer various strange justifications that deflect attention from the essentials of their policy: lower taxes for...people like them, and higher taxes -- not to mention significant losses of high-paying jobs -- for almost everyone else."
We have no hard evidence of a secret conspiracy between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. But we know there's a common thread that binds them: greed.
It's greed that we know we must fight: the greed of plutocrats like Trump and his cabinet, and the greed of national security contractors who would heighten international tensions for their own gain.
But progressives and Democrats shouldn't fight each other. That may be what the "almost deep state" wants, but it's not what the country needs. We can build a unified movement around the corruption that's already been uncovered in Trump's "swamp cabinet" and the money-crazed GOP.
Impanel that commission, because we deserve the truth. But until we have the truth about Russia's ties to Trump -- from reputable, public and trustworthy sources -- let's fight President Trump with the weapons we already have at hand: the weapons of truth, accountability and justice.
Those weapons will never hurt the hands that hold them.
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