Collusion After the Fact?

Two comments on this story. First, this is a very serious issue, impeachment worthy if accurate. No, presidents do not have a right to say anything at all that they want to foreign leaders. They have sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution, and anything that threatens that constitutional order, including the validity of elections, is a violation of that oath, and a fit subject for Congressional oversight.

Second, a former FBI official asks, "And the idea is, if the president committed obstruction of justice, fired the director of the FBI to negatively impact or to shut down our investigation of Russia's malign activity and possibly in support of his campaign, as a counterintelligence investigator you have to ask yourself, 'Why would a president of the United States do that?'”

I don't think we need to posit that Trump is intentionally selling out US interests. Due one, I still suspect that Trump has some illicit financial connections with Russian mafia and/or intelligence figures through sanctioned banks that he's simply trying to hide. Second, and I think most plausible of all, Trump doesn't understand what US interests are, is intellectually incapable of distinguishing them from his own interests, and cannot conceive of truly caring about anything that is not in his personal interest, including caring about standards of behaviour that would impinge on his pursuit of his own interest.