I have to believe that our friends in Fountain Hills who still support Trump really do care about the future of our country. I’m sure they don’t want Russia intervening in or controlling our government.

I hoped that Trump would feel this way as well. That’s why it’s so hard to comprehend his response to the very detailed report of our 17 intelligence agencies on their certainty that Russia tried to influence the results of our recent election, not only with hacking but also with the use of propaganda, fake news and social media trolls to trash Hillary and help Mr. Trump become president.

They stated that it isn’t their place to determine what effect this intervention actually had on the election but to report that it definitely was Russia’s intention to sway the results in Trump’s favor.

Russia has a history of intervening in elections in other countries and it’s been noted that they like to support leaders who have businesses in Russia or loans from Russia since they’ll have more control over those leaders. Could this be true? Is Trump indebted to Russia in some way?

We really can’t say since he refuses to release his taxes as all other presidents have done for decades. There’s also no way to know if Trump will be engaging in conflicts of interest as he makes policy since we don’t know of his business relationships with other countries.

Now we’re being asked to confirm his nominees even though they have not all filled out their required ethics forms. This, coming on the heels of congress trying to shut down the ethics committee, makes one wonder what’s going on.

Partisanship needs to stop at the water’s edge. True patriots need to defend our country against foreign intervention and hold our leaders accountable.