text: The past tense of 'beget' is 'begot,' Comrade. If the Obama presidency was such a failure, why did Clinton, a candidate with much baggage and a woman to boot, garner almost 3 million more votes than Trump ? Maybe the begetting of Trump had much more to do with Putin's role in the U.S. election than did the imagined failures of the Obama administration. Maybe certain kinds of Americans are more loyal to their backward ideas than they are to the nation they inhabit and its democratic institutions. Maybe these pro-Putin dupes are the dregs of American society, their patriotism all show and no substance.