Don’t take it from me
Ican say things all day long, and no supporters of President Donald Trump will ever be swayed. His propaganda and constant drum beating about fake news and the liberal media have convinced his loyalists that everyone is out to get him.
Even video evidence of Trump himself directly contradicting his own statements isn’t enough to show them that they are sacrificing their own credibility and sensibility for a man who lies as a hobby and habit. How can President Trump’s own words not be enough to contradict President Trump’s own words?
The best recent example of this is his interview with The Sun during his post-NATO visit to England. Less than 24 hours after making incendiary comments about Prime Minister Theresa May during the recorded interview, Trump stood next to May and denied making the comments. Most people saw the problem. Trump supporters saw it as another attack on their dear leader by the fake news. After the Trump-Putin summit on Monday where the two world leaders met behind closed doors so we may never know what was discussed, Trump came to the press conference and took Vladimir Putin’s word over America’s own intelligence community. There is literally no precedent for such un-American behavior from an American president.
After the appropriate outcry about Trump’s performance, the United States President tried to tweet to explain himself — as he is wont to do. “As I said today and many times before, ‘I have GREAT confidence in MY intelligence people.’ However, I also recognize that in order to build a brighter future, we cannot exclusively focus on the past — as the world’s two largest nuclear powers, we must get along!” Trump tweeted.
First, in no way do we need to “get along” with a foreign power that has been caught meddling in our election. Obviously, the man who benefited — and some say orchestrated — that meddling, disagrees. Second, who does Trump see as “his” intelligence people? Apparently, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coates — a former Republican Senator from Indiana who was appointed to his position last year by Trump — doesn’t make that list.
“My people came to me, [Director of National Intelligence] Dan Coats came to me, some others, they said they think it’s Russia. I have President Putin. He just said it’s not Russia. I will say this, I don’t see any reason why it would be,” Trump said in a press conference.
That is amazing. America is in danger. Trump himself is a clear and present danger to these United States. Yet he still has supporters who will be angry with me for saying that. I am a registered Republican and have only voted for one Democrat for President in my life — unlike Trump — but his supporters will call my statements biased or fake news because, like Pavlov’s dogs, they know where to go when the bell rings. So I will step aside for the remainder of this column and let “real Republicans” who aren’t part of the liberal media describe recent events. Let’s begin with Oklahoma’s own Sen. James Lankford who has already expressed his support for the 2020 re-election bid for Donald Trump. It is safe to say he is a supporter.
“I trust the assessments of Dan Coats, Gina Haspel and their teams more than I trust a former KGB agent, Vladimir Putin. U.S. Presidents should meet with foreign leaders. But we must unequivocally denounce Russia’s election interference attempts and human rights abuses around the world,” Sen. Lankford said Monday. Sen. Jeff Flake also had some thoughts on Monday’s events in Helsinki, Finland. “I never thought I would see the day when our American President would stand on the stage with the Russian President and place blame on the United States for Russian aggression,” Sen. Flake said. “This is shameful.”
Honestly, I’ve lost count of the number of times in the past 18 months that a statement about Trump’s presidency could begin with “I never thought I would see the day...” and end with, “This is shameful.”
Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia William J. Burns — who worked in the state department under Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama — doesn’t mince his words on the press conference after the Putin love fest, “I think that press conference was the single most embarrassing performance by an American president on the world stage that I’ve ever seen.”
Like I said, he has seen a few performances by American presidents. That doesn’t feel liberal or fake. It seems like some really conservative, well-informed people seem to believe that making nice with diabolical dictators and trashing America’s intelligence community on the world stage is a bad idea. You can keep quoting Republican leaders and Trump apologists all day. Newt Gingrich, Joe Walsh, Ben Sasse and so many more.