President-Elect Biden, reacting on Thursday to Russia’s unprecedented hacking of at least five key federal agencies, including Homeland Security: “A good defense isn’t enough. We need to disrupt and deter our adversaries from undertaking significant cyber attacks in the first place. We will do that by, among other things, imposing substantial costs on those responsible for such malicious attacks, including in coordination with our allies and partners. Our adversaries should know that, as President, I will not stand idly by in the face of cyber assaults on our nation.”

Trump, reacting to Russia’s unprecedented hacking: Nothing. Nothing for an entire week. Then, yesterday, just as his White House was reportedly preparing a statement that would tie the hack to Russia, the lame-duck loser went full treason on Twitter: “The Cyber Hack is far greater in the Fake News Media than in actuality. I have been fully briefed and everything is well under control. Russia, Russia, Russia is the priority chant when anything happens because Lamestream is, for mostly financial reasons, petrified of discussing the possibility that it may be China (it may!). There could also have been a hit on our ridiculous voting machines during the election, which is now obvious that I won big.”

Right to the bitter end of his un-American occupation, he’s still going belly up for his Kremlin master – at the expense of our national security. Gee, who could ever have seen that coming.

As I warned during his first year in office, when he refused to acknowledge Vladimir Putin’s invasion of the 2016 election, “We’re not prepared (for more cyber attacks). Trump’s ongoing subservience to his case officer, and his failure to take all possible steps to guard against further attacks, is the scandal that will live in infamy.”

It is, indeed, the meta-scandal of the MAGA era, and – as we now know – it has only grown in magnitude. I don’t mean to imply, of course, that my ’17 warning was unique. Heck, one prominent American said this to Trump’s face during the election season of ’16: “It’s pretty clear you won’t admit that the Russians have engaged in cyber-attacks against the United States of America…that you are willing to spout the Putin line, sign up for his wish list, break up NATO, do whatever he wants to do and that you continue to get help from him because he has a very clear favorite in this race.”

Thank you, Hillary Clinton.

Early on in Trump’s tenure, the entire U.S. intelligence community knew what was going on. As James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, remarked in ’17, Trump’s leashed obedience showed us “what a great case officer Vladimir Putin is. He knows how to handle an asset, and that’s what he’s doing with the president.”

The Washington Post, also in ’17, reported that intelligence officials, worried about Russia’s growing capacity for cyber attacks, tried to stage “impromptu interventions” with Trump, to no avail. And Trump’s senior advisers were loathe to enter the Oval Office with sensitive Russia news, because they didn’t want Trump to “erupt.” Their rule was: “Don’t walk that last 5 1/2 feet.”

Never before has a foreign adversary treated an American president as such a sap. One particular Trump tweet, in the summer of ’17, was a beaut: “Putin & I discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking & many other negative things will be guarded.”

Then he humiliated us at the Helsinki summit in the summer of ’18, when he sided with Putin against our intelligence community. The U.S. agencies were unanimous in their conclusion that Russia had cyber-invaded the ’16 election, but Trump didn’t buy it. With Putin at his elbow, he declared: “He just said it’s not Russia. I will say this. I don’t see any reason why it would be.”

At this late date, with 31 days left on Trump’s clock, it almost doesn’t matter whether he has sold out America because Putin is blackmailing him with God knows what, or whether it’s because citizen Trump wants to ensure that the Russians will help him pay off his massive massive personal debts, or whether he’s simply in thrall to Putin’s machismo. What matters most is where his weakness has left us a nation.

And yet, even now (why should now be different), virtually nobody of stature in the GOP (Grovel Over Putin) has seen fit to rebuke their surrender monkey. As ticked-off conservative Rick Tyler tweeted yesterday, “Republicans used to care about national security. No really, they did. They did. I’m not joking. It’s true. I remember. No, really. You gotta believe me. They did. I’m being serious.”

Whatever happened to the party that always prided itself for being tough on Russia? Back in the 1950s, Republicans were so tough on Russia to the point of extremism. They indulged Senator Joe McCarthy’s red-baiting lies, which ruined the lives of many innocents, because they felt that his excesses were justified in the fight against Russian infiltration. Now they’ve swung to the opposite extreme. Today’s Republicans persist in petting Putin’s puppy, even though his words and inaction continue – to the bitter end – to excuse or abet Russian infiltration.

Speaking of words, here’s what he said in January 2019: “I’ve been tougher on Russia than anybody else, any other – probably any other president, period, but certainly the last three or four presidents, modern day presidents. Nobody’s been as tough as I have from any standpoint.”

But here’s his toughness in action: Three months ago, as you may recall, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned. Every western leader – save one – condemned the incident and demanded answers from Putin. America’s purported tough guy merely said, “I don’t know exactly what happened…We have not had any proof yet, but we will take a look.” Three weeks later, a reporter asked him whether he had indeed taken a look. His response: “Ahh, we’ll talk about that at another time.” That was the last time.

If Trump was really tough, Putin would never have ramped up the cyber attacks. Russia thrives on weakness, and Trump, abetted by a compliant party, has been the ultimate useful idiot. Is Inauguration Day here yet?