TRUMP AND PUTIN STAR IN MOVIE OF THE YEAR

Trump-Putin: the feature film

Two hours and 15 minutes.

Sounds like a new movie title.

Now if we only knew what was really said in that meeting between American President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. And by whom.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who was also in the meeting, said Trump accepted Putin’s assertion that Russia did not interfere in the U.S. election that resulted in Trump’s November win.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who was in the meeting as well, would not say whether Trump flatly told Putin that Russia interfered in the election, saying instead: “He pressed him and then felt like at this point, how do we go forward?”

Tillerson acknowledged that Putin denied involvement in the Democratic National Committee and various email hacking, as well as the election meddling that resulted in false stories on Facebook and other websites intended to discredit Hillary Clinton and help Trump get elected, “as I think he has in the past.” But Tillerson added that the White House was not “dismissing the issue” but instead focused on “how do we secure a commitment” that there will be no interference in the future.

Two hours and 15 minutes and they didn’t “secure a commitment” one way or another?

And this was a “positive” and “successful” meeting? Trailers to come.

The setting

The prequel to “The Meeting” movie might well be President Trump’s own denial of the Russian hacking the day before in comments he made to the press in Poland.

There, Trump repeated a position he’s espoused before and one shared by Putin by saying “nobody really knows” who was behind the hacking during the U.S. presidential campaign. He also questioned U.S. intelligence agencies’ affirmation of Russia’s involvement because they were wrong about whether Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction before the U.S. invasion in 2003. Seriously. He said this on the eve of meeting with Putin. Hallie Jackson of NBC News asked the president during a joint news conference with Polish President Andrzej Duda in Warsaw if he would “once and for all, yes or no, definitively say that Russia interfered in the 2016 election.”

Here was the rest of his all-over-the-map answer.

“I think it was Russia. And I think it could have been other people and other countries. It could have been a lot of people interfered. I’ve said it very simply. I think it could very well have been Russia but I think it could very well have been other countries, and I won’t be specific. But I think a lot of people interfere. I think it has been happening for a long time. It has been happening for many, many years.”

Given this prelude, why in the world would Putin feel pressured to say, “Yes sir, no sir, we’ll never do that again.”

It seems Trump engineered his own failure yet again.

The narrative

‘The Meeting’ also has a side plot.

Trump, on the morning of the caucus with Putin, found himself once again reliving the campaign trail.

His sunrise tweets included this one at 3:40 a.m.: “Everyone here is talking about why John Podesta refused to give the DNC server to the FBI and the CIA. Disgraceful!”

There’s just too much wrong there to even discuss — like Podesta, whose personal email account was hacked, was part of the Clinton’s campaign, not a part of or in charge of the Democratic National Committee and its hacked computers. But that’s not the worst of this.

Let’s review: The president of the United States is at the G20 conference with the most important leaders of the world. Unlike Trump, they know they are gathered to consider all the serious things going on in the world — things like Syria, like climate change, like famines and like that devilish North Korean leader who keeps making nuclear weapons and popping off missiles.

But what does our leader wake up worrying about? Answer: Last year’s news and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman.

Not even Russian hackers and fake news creators can make this stuff up.

The plot thickens

And what is any movie without a cliff-hanger? Secretary of State Tillerson confirmed after the two-and-ahalf-hour confab that the U.S. and Russia agreed to a cease-fire in southwestern Syria. He also said that Washington “sees no longterm role” for the family of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Hmmm.

Tillerson said the cease-fire agreement was set to take effect on Sunday. Jordan and Israel are also part of the deal, The Associated Press reports, quoting an unnamed U.S. official.

The secretary of state told reporters that while Washington and Moscow have had conflicting views on Syria in the past, Russia now has “an interest in seeing the Mideast nation become a stable place.”

The AP notes that this fifth attempt at a cease-fire deal is separate from “de-escalation zones” that were part of an agreement among Russia, Turkey and Iran earlier this year. And de-escalation zones pacts did not include the United States.

The AP also reported, however, that: “Earlier in the week, Syria’s military had said it was halting combat operations in the south of Syria for four days, in advance of a new round of Russia-sponsored talks in Astana [Kazakhstan]. That move covered [the] southern provinces of Daraa, Quneitra and Sweida. Syria’s government briefly extended that unilateral cease-fire, which is now set to expire Saturday — a day before the U.S. and Russian deal would take effect.”

Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock.