Trump ‘raises’ meddling with Russia’s Putin, and moves on... OTHER

It was the overarching question about President Trump’s meeting with Vladimir Putin: Would Mr Trump complain to Mr Putin about Russian interference in last year’s US election or remain silent about it?

Apparently Mr Trump decided to split the difference: bringing up the issue but not being adamant or unpleasant about it.

Briefing reporters, secretary of state Rex Tillerson said that Mr Trump began the two-hour-plus discussion by “raising the concerns of the American people regarding Russian interference.” That was followed, Mr Tillerson said, by a “robust” and “lengthy” discussion of the issue.

But the dominant theme of the discussion in Mr Tillerson’s telling seemed to be “let bygones be bygones,” or, as Mr Tillerson put it, “There was not a lot of re-litigating” of past differences.

To extend the legal metaphor, it seems that, in connection with the election issue, Mr Putin at most did what defendants in a lawsuit do when they sign a consent decree: deny past wrongdoing while promising not to do wrong in the future. Mr Tillerson said that he and Mr Putin decided to create a “framework” to monitor cyber attacks and evaluate who should be “held accountable.”

“Both leaders felt there are a lot of things both of us are unhappy about,” Mr Tillerson said, but they wanted to move on.

So should mR Trump get credit for “raising the concerns of the American people”?