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Ron, I don’t know how closely you have followed the events to which you refer when you assert that Trump is dismantling the ‘authority and independence of institutions such as the Justice department and intelligence agencies’.

Whatever you think of Trump, and I concede he has some pretty serious defects, in regard to these matters it is now clear that he is ‘much more sinned against than sinning’.

Are you aware, for example, that the entire narrative that Trump colluded with the Russians to undermine the 2016 election is entirely bogus – and was known to be bogus by the very figures in the Justice Department and the FBI who so assiduously promoted it from the outset?

There is now no doubt about that, with the release in the past week of transcripts of confidential testimony given to the House Intelligence Committee by some of the key figures promoting this narrative: James Clapper, Susan Rice, Andrew McCabe and others. They gave testimony, privately and under oath, that they had no evidence of any such collusion, at the same time as they were saying the opposite in the public media.

Or that the Muller inquiry that was tasked with investigating these matters, a majority of the investigators in which were Hillary Clinton campaign donors, after more than two years of exhaustive investigations, had to conclude in the end that ‘the inquiry found no evidence that the Trump campaign conspired or co-ordinated with the Russians to undermine the 2016 election’?

Or that, as part of this investigation, warrants to conduct covert surveillance on figures in the Trump campaign were obtained from the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) Court by the use of the so-called Steele Dossier that the FBI knew beforehand was nothing but salacious scuttlebutt?

Or of the massive prosecutorial misconduct, including the withholding of exculpatory evidence, involved in the prosecution of key figures in the Trump campaign in an effort to coerce testimony from them damaging to Trump, most egregiously in the case of General Michael Flynn?

The irony here is that Trump, far from acting as a Benito Mussolini-like autocrat, more often seemed like a rabbit in the headlights, strangely reluctant to use the executive authority he undoubtedly possessed to shut this crap down.