Trump has canceled the aforementioned treaties, in addition to ratcheting up sanctions against Russia. He has beefed up the defense budget that Obama gutted, and pressured NATO allies to meet their defense commitments, all to Russia’s chagrin. He has authorized defense missiles for Poland, in addition to shifting U.S. troops there and supplying the Poles with advanced U.S. warplanes, infuriating Putin. He has provided Ukraine with Javelin-2 antitank missiles to use against Russia (weapons that the Obama/Biden administration denied for fear of provoking Putin). Under his command, our forces engaged in a firefight with Russian mercenaries in Syria and have fired missiles on Syrian installations supported by Russia. Trump withdrew from the Obama/Biden Iran nuclear deal and slammed Tehran with sanctions despite Russia’s objections. And Trump continues to rally opposition to Russia’s coveted Nordstream 2 gas pipeline project with Germany, which would increase Moscow’s leverage over Europe.

Is it true that Russia is paying bounties to the Taliban for attacks on U.S. forces in Afghanistan? That sort of play by those malevolent actors would not surprise any informed observer and can certainly not be dismissed out of hand. The question is under investigation, including the significant matters of what our intelligence agencies did with the information, whether appropriate force protection measures were taken, whether the intelligence was sufficiently reliable that the president should have been briefed — and whether he was, in fact, briefed.

Good. There absolutely should be a thorough inquiry. But it would be foolish to assume the worst based on anonymously sourced reporting by the anti-Trump media-Democrat complex, which has already spent years flogging a bogus Trump–Russia narrative. The only thing that may be more bogus than that narrative is the notion that a Joe Biden presidency sends shivers down the spines of the Taliban and the Putin regime.