This year’s Editorial Board tends to refrain from writing our editorials about politics, but this week, the latest breaking news from the Trump Administration left us no other choice.
On Monday, Oct. 30, former campaign adviser to President Donald Trump, George Papadopoulos, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contact with Russians. On the same day, Paul Manafort, former campaign manager and his business partner, pleaded not guilty to felony charges of conspiracy against the U.S. and other counts. According to the Hartford Courant, Papadopoulos’ guilty plea marks the first criminal case that cites interactions between Trump campaign associates and Russian intermediaries during the 2016 presidential campaign.
With slander being thrown around on both sides of the political spectrum during the 2016 presidential election, it is justifiably redemptive to see both Papadopoulos and Manafort being indicted, seeing that their actions not only put Trump’s campaign under scrutiny, but also put the people of the United States in danger of foreign entities. While fingers can point back to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton putting the safety of the American people under jeopardy by revealing privatized information through her public email server, we have to realize that since Trump did in fact win the election, all his dealings, including that of his campaign team, are now magnified due to his now increasingly public and political lifestyle.
This is increasingly similar to the recent Harvey Weinstein controversy, which has now spread to individuals that have either known about the situation previously (Quentin Tarantino) or actually partook in the crime (Bob Weinstein). While Harvey Weinstein is still the focal point of the issue, those who have helped aid him in keeping the issue under wraps are equally as responsible in the overall problem, which is similar to what we are dealing with in the collusion of the 2016 Presidential Election.
As Harvey Weinstein was cast from a position of power, we agree that some sort of comparable action should come next for others in collusion within Trump’s campaign in order to display to the American public that no punishable action should go unnoticed due to one’s stature of power. Though as we see it, the indictment of Papadopoulos and Manafort is a step in the right direction of making justice even sweeter in this debacle of a presidential election.
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