What has Donald Trump ever done to deserve such fealty from Susan Collins?
Even as they’ve both worked to forward Republican priorities, the former president and Maine’s senior senator have never been outward allies. Collins even voted to convict Trump at his second impeachment trial, after his actions and words led his supporters to storm the Capitol.
Yet here Collins is, doing her best to put Trump back in the Oval Office, even as his legal problems mount, and while he proves every day just how unfit he is for the presidency.
You’d think a longtime member of the Senate Intelligence Committee would be worried about classified documents being kept in an unsecure location. You’d think she’d be more skeptical about a former president who has played fast and loose before with our most closely guarded secrets, and who has proved he has little regard for the law as it applies to him.
You’d think she would put politics aside and tell her constituents the hard truth. Mainers deserve that from their senator.
But when the FBI searched Mar-a-lago last August, while Maine’s other senator, Angus King, who is also on the Intelligence Committee, correctly wondered why such serious documents were in a place they had no right to be, Collins was worried instead about the justification for such an “extraordinary search.”
While serious people were trying to limit the damage done by Trump’s criminality, Collins was raising “legitimate questions” about the search, providing cover for the former president, and everyone else who was reacting to the search with threats and innuendo.
Nearly a year later, any questions Collins may have had have been answered. We know Trump left the White House with documents he had no business having. We know federal authorities went out of their way to retrieve them without taking legal action.
We know Trump returned some, but not all, of the offending documents, on two occasions, both times saying it was all he had. We know that was a lie, as investigators found additional documents when the FBI finally conducted its search.
We know that he kept at least some of those documents in a bathroom and on a stage, as photos in the indictment show.
The indictment also refers to a recording of Trump, obtained by CNN this week, in which the former president says he is holding highly secretive U.S. plans for attacking Iran. In the audio, he seems to be showing the plans to others in the room.
Again, a longtime U.S. senator and member of the Intelligence Committee should have no trouble saying just how dangerous Trump’s actions have been. Yet Collins, when asked about the developments last week by WGME, once again carried Trump’s water, saying it was no different than how Joe Biden has “mishandled classified documents.”
Based on the evidence, that’s not true in the least. Biden, as well as Mike Pence, found classified material from their respective terms as vice president in their homes and promptly returned them, cooperating with law enforcement.
Trump purposely took boxes and boxes of records he shouldn’t have, then refused to give them back for more than a year. The indictment shows that he took steps to conceal them from investigators.
They are not the same, and anyone who tells you so is either buying Trump’s lies, or hoping you will.
Who knows why Trump stole the documents. He certainly likes showing off the trappings of the presidency, and thumbing his nose at authority. He has mentioned several times that the federal government paid the estate of Richard Nixon $18 million for his presidential records, hinting that maybe he was after his own payout.
There are more nefarious reasons why Trump might want to keep secret documents. But even the petty, narcissistic ones put U.S. secrets at risk.
Despite the overwhelming evidence of criminality, in the days following the indictment, many Republicans jumped to his defense, saying it was a sign of an unfair justice system. That’s absurd, and it’s dangerous.
But it’s better than what Collins is doing. At least the others are clear and honest about what they want: A second Trump term, regardless of his actions, whatever the consequences. Collins is fine with that outcome, she just doesn’t want anyone to know it.
She says she doesn’t want Trump to be her party’s nominee, and that she’ll support another Republican. But she won’t rule out supporting him in the general election.
Apparently, the only thing worse than a president who incites an insurrection to stop the democratic transfer of power, who goads his supporters to violence, who lies and flouts the law and puts our nation’s security at risk, is a Democrat.
Instead of the moderate senator Maine voters wanted when they elected Collins, they got just another partisan.
Whether Collins herself votes for Trump is besides the point. She’s out on the campaign trail right now, giving him everything he needs.
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