(Washington Post) ST. PETERSBURG — When President Trump expressed doubts Monday about the conclusions of U.S. law enforcement agencies that identified Russian officers as responsible for the hacking of the Democratic National Committee back in 2016, people indignantly called such behavior by an American president “nothing short of treasonous.”
But that was only one camp of Americans. Critics of the president and supporters of the president live in two divergent worlds, within completely different sets of references. Since the end of 2016, Americans have been engaging in a new exacerbation of old conflicts about race, gender, monuments to Confederate history and other divisive issues. One might call them culture wars. In these political and cultural debates, I see Russia as playing the role of the “other.”
In the view of many Trump supporters, the facts exposed by the FBI and special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation are just not important. What is important is the question of who provides information about the investigation — and why — to the press. Trump supporters’ answer is that there is an anti-Trump political and media establishment using Russia to obstruct Trump’s presidency. […]
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