Trump’s Crisis of Legitimacy

Nothing matters—until something matters. Helsinki is that something, and it will not stop mattering soon. In the aftermath, Republican leaders in Congress have felt obliged to state unequivocally that Russia did interfere with the election. But as they speak, they face an uncomfortable problem. Here’s Paul Ryan’s version of that problem. “They did interfere in our elections—it’s really Trey Gowdy, the chair of the House Oversight Committee, issued a statement post-Helsinki: “It is possible to conclude Russia interfered in our election in 2016 without delegitimizing his [President Trump’s] electoral success.” It is to do that, but you have to be strongly motivated. The more plausible and more probable conclusion, even before Helsinki, was that the Russian interference shadowed Trump’s legitimacy. Post-Helsinki, the doubts rankle even more sharply. Republicans want to argue that Russia did something wrong to influence the election’s outcome, while rebuffing questions about whether the outcome of the election was wrongly influenced. This is not a sustainable position, something Trump has recognized more clearly than most of his followers. Donald Trump is a natural-born citizen over the age of 35. Under the rules in place at the time, he received sufficient electoral votes to secure the presidency. American law does not provide for presidential election do-overs no matter what wrongs a candidate is revealed to have committed after the fact. Trump is the lawful president, but legitimacy is not decided by technicalities.