Just for shits and giggles, let's say he is, and the absolute fact of it comes to light. Then what? Is that war on Russia? They infiltrated the highest office of our country and attempted to overthrow the government. That's war, right? You can't just sanction that away.
To be perfectly blunt: yes, but not “war” in the traditional sense as most think about it.
It’s war in the sense that Russia is currently waging against the US and the EU, which is a much broader context than traditional military conflict. So: NSA, CIA, FBI, MI5, MI6, DGSE (France), AW (Poland), (n.b. Germany conspicuously absent, as they’ve allowed an LOT of Russian influence to get into their institutions in a LOT of places, and that is going to take a while to root out) etc. take the gloves off, as the FSB has been doing for literal decades. If they want to fuck around and pull the “little green men” bullshit on NATO territory, help them find out what happens by responding to any incursions of that variety with a division or six of armored cav lined up on the borders. Massive increases in air defense; likewise for marine and submarine threats - specifically, figuring out and catching up to very interesting and surprisingly capable non-acoustic submarine detection and tracking technologies that the Soviets devised later in the Cold War, and that the Russians continue to use and refine.
More simply: this is the Cold War 2, right now, today. We’re in it. We need to fucking act like it.
Let's start with booting them out of Ukraine so they don't obtain more power and resources to continue spreading this fuckery and enabling their war machine. Should be doing it anyway.
Even if he came right out and admitted it on national television there is not a damn thing that would happen. All the republicans would try to justify that’s it fine and not a big deal, 40% of the population would welcome our new Russian overlords, and nobody in the DOJ wouldn’t be bothered to actually prosecute anything. I have lost all faith in this country to hold anyone accountable for anything.
They infiltrated the highest office of our country and attempted to overthrow the government. That’s war, right?
considering how many times we've actually overthrown peoples governments to our own ends, turnabout would just be fair play - least we better hope it's not something people will go to war over because there's a long list of potential enemies
By no means do I want to diminish the historical wrongheadedness of the US, but using that as a justification for letting Russia just have at it without any response is just categorically asinine.
We’re already in the Second Cold War. It’s here now.
Part of not being blind to your own jingoism is understanding how your actions affect others- I'm not saying that it's OK to coup or attempt to undermine governments with media operations, I'm saying that if we're going to act like this is suddenly some sort of mortal sin after decades of doing that ourselves, people aren't going to take it seriously. It's certainly not going to make outside observers think that we're a reasonable actor who's simply under attack by authoritarians. Purely for riling up the base.