He’ll say, I’m sure, that he did so unwittingly, not knowing that the organizers were actually Kremlin pawns.

And as we all know, it’s not collusion if your interests happen to align with Russia’s but you coordinated with them “unwittingly.”

I wonder how many Russian-sponsored rallies Moore attended in the 1970s and 80s.

The government alleged in an indictment signed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller that the defendants organized a Nov. 12 “Trump is NOT my President” rally in New York. Their “strategic goal” was to “sow discord in the U.S. political system,” the indictment said.

On Nov. 12, Moore tweeted: “At today’s Trump Tower protest. He wouldn’t come down.”

He attached a picture of himself posing with a large number of protesters.

He did indeed, and posted a Facebook video too:

At today's Trump Tower protest. He wouldn't come down. Here's my Facebook Live coverage: https://t.co/FzxOyljoK5 pic.twitter.com/PxjoALcyn8

— Michael Moore (@MMFlint) November 13, 2016

Among the signs carried at Putin-backed anti-Trump rallies in various cities that November day was one that read “Putin won.” I’ll say!

POTUS was rage-tweeting again this morning, now that he’s figured out that the indictment of 13 Russians on Friday will only increase skepticism on the left that he won the election fair and square. His new target? Barack Obama:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/965925223949357056
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/965928352614965248
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/965930611272712192
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/965943827931549696

Democrats will screech at that last tweet, that a president willing to verbally attack anyone *except* Putin and Russia could plausibly claim to be tougher than Obama was. Talk is cheap, though. John Noonan, one of Tom Cotton’s deputies, chimes in:

Going to have to disagree. Strip away the theater and look at policies

1. Significant increase in defense and intel budget
2. Nuclear Posture Review arrests Russian advantages in tactical nuclear weapons
3. Strike on Russian ally Assad over chem use
4. Lethal weapons to Ukraine

— John Noonan (@noonanjo) February 20, 2018

Obama backed out of an attack on Syria in 2013 the first time Assad used chemical WMDs, accepting an embarrassing “face-saving” compromise brokered by Putin himself that purported to take chemical weapons out of Assad’s hands. (Spoiler: It didn’t.) Obama’s been criticized by his own party for not doing more to anticipate Russian interference in the 2016 campaign and for not punishing the Kremlin more harshly once that interference was sniffed out. Mueller’s indictment claimed that Russia’s troll farm began building an influence apparatus in the U.S. on Obama’s watch, in 2014, a year before Trump was even a candidate for president. And Obama had the same dopey idea as a new president that George W. Bush and later Trump himself had, that a diplomatic “reset” with Russia might be in the cards. As late as 2012, he infamously goofed on Mitt Romney at one of their debates that the 1980s called and wanted its foreign policy back when Romney kept insisting that Russia was our prime geopolitical enemy. Obama embarrassed himself over and over again on Russia. The fact that it’s even debatable that he was softer on Moscow than a guy whose campaign is being investigated for collusion speaks volumes.

But Noonan’s account is incomplete too. Why hasn’t Trump enforced the new sanctions passed overwhelmingly by the Republican-controlled Congress last year? With his intel chiefs united in believing that Russia will try to interfere in the midterm campaign too, what has POTUS done to try to prevent that? “Obama was weak on Russia” is a dog-bites-man story. Trump’s the guy who got elected pledging strength in repelling foreign threats. Well, here’s a foreign threat. Repel it.

I can’t find the highlight reel from Fox & Friends that he mentions in his tweets but here’s an interesting soundbite from Trump crony Newt Gingrich. This is almost Romney-esque in its hawkishness. Does it reflect Trump’s thinking?

.@newtgingrich: “No question, the Russians today, are the most aggressive big country in the world… The Russians are pushing everywhere.” pic.twitter.com/GBwPMoA4QM

— Fox News (@FoxNews) February 20, 2018