While 700 words will be going into this commentary, there is only one point that must be made, over and over again if necessary. For all the abuses and crimes of the Trump administration, and his GOP watercarriers, it must be clear as to his motives that our president, Donald Trump, is a full-blown Russian agent, an agent of a foreign power hostile to this nation and all it stands for.

It is troubling and puzzling to listen to otherwise-reasonable opponents of the president’s many nefarious and despicable moves say they can’t understand why he is doing the things he is. While many confess to being flummoxed and baffled, it seems the most clear-thinking of them blame his behavior on self-interest, on his real or perceived financial opportunities. Others blame a personal irrationality driven by psychological factors such as narcissism or general sociopathy.

While those may be factors, they ignore the reality that is staring all of us right in the face, that was the only rational conclusion one could draw from the investigations reported in the Mueller Report. It’s the reality that explains everything clearly. He is a Russian agent!

If one lines up the evidence by positing this as an operational hypothesis, and one can only wonder how many in the U.S. intelligence community, including Mueller himself, have been operating this way since Trump took office, and certainly since he fired James Comey, then everything readily falls into place. In fact, it’s only approach that does.

OK, maybe it’s considered too radical to make it public that the leadership of the opposition to Trump — and sadly but realistically this is what we are now to be called, the “Resistance” or “Opposition” and not merely Democrats or anti-Trump Republicans — must begin to rally the nation against him by identifying him as an active Russian agent of influence.

It is not particularly helpful to get caught in the weeds of explaining how this could have happened to this nation, although the explanations are all there in the Mueller Report. (That is, as we know, the Russians pulled off a massive and elaborate interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election to put a man into the White House who received over two million fewer votes than the popular winner).

But if we accept the Mueller Report conclusion that the Russians interfered and were effective in getting Trump elected, then should we be surprised that Trump has been acting in the Russian strategic interests? On the contrary, one should be surprised that any other conclusion would apply.

Speaker Pelosi has come close in her effort to characterize the issue as Trump Versus the Constitution as she moves the impeachment process forward. But in this characterization, what’s missing is a clear definition of what Trump is. Who, or what, is against the U.S. Constitution in this? It is not just Trump, it is Trump as an active agent of a hostile foreign power.

Over the years, I have found useful the book by former KGB agent and defector to the West Stanislav Levchenko, “On the Wrong Side, My Life in the KGB” (Pergamon-Brassey, 1987) useful for, among other things, an appendix where he discusses how the KGB (Putin being a former leader in that agency) recruits spies and agents. He used the acronym, MICE (for money, ideology, compromise and ego), to describe the options used in the KGB method. Trump, clearly, has been a sucker for three out of four of those options.

Recruiting spies and agents is a cruel and uncompromising business. As Levchenko wrote, “Mine was the second oldest profession in the world. And it’s not much different than the first. The oldest profession seduces the body; the second oldest seduces the soul.”

Trump was recruited long before the Soviet Union was dissolved. In the last decade or so, Putin has seen to its revival, “implacably committed,” Levchenko wrote, “to undermining the position of the free world through military superiority, subversion, traditional espionage activities, active measures, and conventional diplomacy.”

“Money, compromise and ego” ensnared Trump, and now he’s in the White House.

Nicholas Benton may be emailed at nfbenton@fcnp.com.