SURPRISE, SURPRISE — TRUMP SIDES WITH RUSSIA
Donald Trump — on the stage with Russian president Vladimir Putin — would not say he believed his own intelligence community when, repeatedly and with one voice, it has told him Russia meddled with our 2016 election.
Instead, our president called the American Justice Department’s probe of that meddling “a disaster for our country.” Then our president went on a rant asking “where are [Hillary Clinton’s] emails” and “where is the server?”
“It’s ridiculous what’s going on with the probe,” Trump insisted. “I don’t see any reason why it would be [Russia interfering]. President Putin was extremely strong in his denial.”
The reality is that Putin was slick with his denial. “The Russian state has never interfered and is not going to interfere into internal American affairs, including election process,” was one answer he gave. But another reply contradicted that when a persistent reporter asked Putin: Did you direct any of your officials to help him [Trump]?”
“Yes, I did. Yes, I did,” Putin replied. “Because he talked about bringing the U.S.-Russia relationship back to normal.”
Putin, like Trump, offered other startling answers. He said through an interpreter: “As to who is to be believed and to who’s not to be believed, you can trust no one if you take this. Where did you get this idea that President Trump trusts me or I trust him? He defends the interests of the United States of America, and I do defend the interests of the Russian Federation.”
Then there was this Putin comment: “I believe that Russia is a democratic state, and I hope you are not denying this right to your own country, you’re not denying that United States is a democracy. Do you believe United States is a democracy? And if so, if it is a democratic state, then the final conclusion in this kind of a dispute can only be delivered by a trial, by the court, not by the executive, by the law enforcement.”
And Putin invited special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators to Russia to sit in on Russian police interviewing the dozen Russian intelligence officers Mueller’s grand jury has indicted — reciprocally, of course. Putin would want Russian police get to interview an American who made money in Russia without paying taxes and then contributed to Clinton’s campaign.
Former CIA director John Brennan immediately tweeted: “Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the threshold of ‘high crimes & misdemeanors.’ It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican patriots: Where are you???” Indeed.
It seems increasingly clear that Trump is auditioning to be Putin’s newest oligarch. The question is whether the two see America as Putin’s newest Crimea.
Consider:
› Trump, on the eve of his much trumpeted and ill-prepared-for meeting with Putin in Helsinki, called the European Union, EU for short, a trade “foe.”
The EU came about in the aftermath of World War II to ensure the free movement of people, goods, services and capital, enact legislation in justice and maintain common policies on trade, agriculture, fisheries and regional development. The EU traces its origins to the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community. Sound familiar? There’s a reason America and the EU are allies. But Trump calls the EU a foe, while he calls Russia “a competitor.”
› Trump, also on the eve of his much-trumpeted and illprepared-for meeting with Putin (he spent two days golfing at one of his resorts in Scotland instead), said he hadn’t “thought of that” — demanding that Russia extradite the indicted GRU intelligence agents to the United States to face charges.
› Trump all week before the meeting also berated our NATO allies, and — of course — referred to the special counsel’s probe as a “rigged witch hunt that really hurts our relationship with Russia.”
Wait. The probe hurts our relationship with a country that is trying to elect our officials for us instead of us electing our officials?
Even before the Trump-Putin so-called summit began, there was nothing Donald Trump could do to win for America.
Putin won the moment Trump called the meeting a summit and laid the groundwork for America’s most embarrassing moment on the world stage ever.
All Putin needed to call this a hands-down Russian success was for it to take place with no screaming and with no American efforts to isolate Russia over its actions against Crimea and Ukraine or its meddling in our election or any other bad acts.
The “competitor” got just that. Check, check, check and a bonus gold star.
And Trump gained brownie points toward his seeming goal — becoming Putin’s American oligarch. America’s president, in one short month, has attacked the EU, started a trade war with our closest allies and dissed everyone on the planet except his favorite bro, Putin, who likes nothing more than stoking divisions in America and among the U.S. and its allies.
Trump and Putin have a win-win. Americans? Not so much.
But look on the bright side. Russian hasn’t yet been declared our national language.