For many months, President Donald Trump was accused of colluding with the Russians. The big media trumpeted the charges and rumors. They practically convicted him.

FBI Director James Comey assured Trump he was not under investigation. 

The director told all the leaders of Congress that the president was not under investigation. He directly briefed 34 leaders. From both parties.

Add up their staff members and aides and intimates, and it comes to a few thousand top people on Capitol Hill. A few thousand who knew Trump was not being investigated. They knew.

Big media certainly knew months ago that Trump was not being investigated. Yet they pumped out a stream of stories of possible collusion. They told the American people their president was being investigated. They knew this was a lie.

Trump asked the FBI’s boss to state publicly that he was not being investigated. He didn’t do it. Maybe he was too busy. He did find time to leak conversations he had with the president. About other matters. He had to be trotted before a Congressional committee before he would say the president was not being investigated.

For months, Trump twisted in the wind. He was savaged by the media and the critics. Few defended him. Yet thousands knew he was not being investigated. And nobody stood up. Nobody called off the bloodhounds.

What was going on? Consider: Of all District of Columbia voters, 4 percent voted for Trump. While 91 percent voted for Hillary Clinton.

Virtually nobody in Washington, D.C. wants this guy in the White House. The reason is simple: He threatens whatever sweet deals they have going for themselves.

Washington is a cesspool. The “cess” is the money. If you are elected to Congress you must raise big money. Democrat memos tell members to spend four hours per day raising money. Republicans are no different. If you want to be on a hot committee, you must raise X millions per year. You have to raise millions for your own campaigns. Some former Congressmen admitted they spent two-thirds of their time asking for money.

Meanwhile, Washington watched the big Clinton machine vacuum up hundreds of millions for charity. Bull. It was an influence-peddling operation. Want proof? Nobody is giving money to that machine these days. Charity my foot.

The awful truth is that Washington is for sale. Most of our politicians have their virtues. But on the side, they are hookers.

Do you suppose those who give all the money to the pols leave it at that? Or do you suppose they want something in return? Like guys who buy hookers, of course they do.

They want spending here. And there. They want regulations to go their way. They want jobs for pals. They want tax breaks. They want contracts — and under-the-table deals.

The cogs and wheels and gears of Washington’s humungous machine are greased with money. Along comes this Trump, this interloper. He wants to toss sand in the gears. He wants to cut fat budgets. He wants to cut regulations. He wants to end a few tax breaks. And unlike the other pols he doesn’t need to ask for money.

Can’t have that.

The critters of the swamp will tolerate and excuse corruption of all kinds. They will hide it. They will rationalize it. As long as it is by one of their own. They will ally with big media to do this. And to attack anyone who threatens their swamp. The big media will help because it is neck deep in the swamp as well.

I doubt Mr. Trump will survive the attacks from the critters. He is the ultimate outsider. He has no friends in Washington. And Washington will chew him up and spit him out. It ain’t gonna be pretty.

From Tom…as in Morgan.          

Tom Morgan writes about political, financial and other subjects from his home near Oneonta. Several upstate radio stations carry his daily commentary, Tom Morgan’s Moneytalk. Contact him at tomasinmorgan@yahoo.com

Back when I was in Congress, I received a phone call from a constituent one day. I’d recently voted to raise the nation’s debt ceiling, and the man was more than irate. “Don’t you understand that we’ve got a serious spending and debt problem in this country?” he asked. “Why did you cast this idiotic vote?”

He was right about the problem. But he was wrong about the vote. With Congress fast approaching another debt-ceiling vote and yet one more “fiscal cliff” drama taking shape, I’d like to explain why that is.

The key thing to understand is that raising the debt ceiling is not about increasing spending. It’s about paying the bills for purchases we have already made. Refusing to increase the debt ceiling is like putting your child in day care so you can work, getting your transmission repaired so you can get to your job, and buying work boots and a hard hat so you can stay safe — and then telling your preschool, mechanic, and local storekeeper you have no intention of paying them. Only, if our nation were to do this, the results would include plummeting investment, rocketing interest rates, and an economic downturn that could be catastrophic.

We do have to find a long-term path to deficit reduction — through spending reductions, increased taxes, or a combination of the two. But using the debt ceiling as a means of reining in excessive spending has not worked since an aggregate ceiling was put in place almost 80 years ago.

Indeed, I’d argue that the nation would be better off scrapping the debt ceiling altogether. I know of no other major country that has a debt-ceiling requirement. It has become a political football.

This yearly battle isn’t worth it. The issue isn’t the debt ceiling. The issue is the debt itself and deficit spending. Our political efforts should go toward finding long-term solutions that restrain spending and boost tax revenue. With all the built-in spending we have — Social Security, Medicare, defense spending and the like — the deficit problem is only going to get worse if we don’t address it now.

It’s worrisome that there appears to be no plan to address the debt ceiling in Congress, despite urgent pleas from the president’s economic advisers to do so by the end of July. It’s even more worrisome that Congressional leaders don’t appear ready to address the core need: realistic, long-term deficit reduction.          

Lee Hamilton is a senior advisor for the Indiana University (IU) Center on Representative Government, distinguished scholar at the IU School of Global and International Studies, and professor of practice at the IU School of Public and Environmental Affairs. Hamilton, a Democrat, was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for 34 years, representing a district in south central Indiana.