President’s affection for Putin is just maddening
I would guess that Sen. John McCain would not have expected in his lifetime to have an American president take the side of a Russian strongman and former KGB colonel over the multiagency opinion of the U.S. intelligence forces.
I’d guess that NO American would have expected such a thing.
Even those who voted for Donald Trump.
(At least I hope so.)
And yet there was Trump, siding with Vladimir Putin about Russian meddling in U.S. elections as well as on the murderous regime in Syria.
Speaking of the meddling, Trump said, “Every time he (Putin) sees me, he says, ‘I didn’t do that.’ And I believe — I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it. But he says, ‘I didn’t do that.’ I think he’s very insulted by it, if you want to know the truth.”
I think most rational Americans would be insulted by the president having such an opinion.
The news reports and intelligence briefings have been consistent on the Russian meddling.
A while back, a top Russian official admitted that his government communicated with Trump’s campaign throughout the election season.
Sergei A. Ryabkov, the deputy foreign minister, told Interfax news agency, “There were contacts. We continue to do this and have been doing this work during the election campaign.”
Supposedly all this went on between the Russians and Trump’s top people.
We already know that the Russians tried — successfully? — to alter the American election by illegal hacking the emails of Democrats, including Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
Or, as the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence put it, “The recent disclosures of alleged hacked emails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian directed efforts. These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the U.S. election process.”
Not to mention the recent revelations of a Trump aide meeting with
shady Russian operatives during the campaign. Still, Trump sides with Putin?
McCain is — justifiably — beside himself.
He issued a statement reading: “President Trump today stated that he believed Vladimir Putin is being sincere when he denies Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and reiterated that he hopes to cooperate with Russia in Syria.
“There’s nothing ‘America First’ about taking the word of a KGB colonel over that of the American intelligence community. There’s no ‘principled realism’ in cooperating with Russia to prop up the murderous Assad regime, which remains the greatest obstacle to a political solution that would bring an end to the bloodshed in Syria. Vladimir Putin does not have America’s interests at heart. To believe otherwise is not only naive but also places our national security at risk.”
Trump tried — a little — to back off his comments over the weekend.
He said, “As to whether I believe it or not, I’m with our agencies, especially as currently constituted. As currently led, by fine people, I believe very much in our intelligence agencies.”
Meantime, the ex-director of national intelligence, James Clapper, along with former CIA director John Brennan, joined McCain in condemning Trump’s comments.
“It’s either naïveté, ignorance, or fear,” Brennan said. No wonder Putin loves Trump.