Never mind Mueller’s probe results, Trump’s colluding with Putin now
The most unforgettable image of the week was the look on the face of Dan Coats, U.S. director of national intelligence, when NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell read him a breaking news bulletin that Vladimir Putin had been invited to the White House.
“Say that again?” Coats asked. The nation’s top intelligence official had been blindsided by President Trump, never consulted or informed of this invitation, no doubt because he would have warned against it. And Trump still hasn’t told Coats what he promised Putin in their one-one-one meeting with only interpreters present.
Why should we be surprised? The president’s bizarre behavior at Helsinki and since has made moot the question of whether he colluded with Putin’s election meddling in 2016.
Trump is colluding with Putin now.
The U.S. president is actively aiding Kremlin efforts to undermine U.S. institutions. His war on his own intelligence and law enforcement agencies is a perfect example of how he is advancing Russia’s goals.
Trump went to Helsinki unprepared and ignored his briefers, leaving himself open to manipulation by a shrewd ex-KGB colonel who masters details.
“I guarantee that Vladimir Putin was prepared for that meeting and knew what buttons he was going to push (with Trump),” said Mike Rogers, the former GOP chair of the House Intelligence Committee. “You must have an agenda.”
Putin insinuated that U.S. intelligence agents and the Mueller investigation were plotting against Trump, playing to Trump’s conspiratorial suspicions about the “deep state.”
Trump’s humiliation of Coats is another win for Putin. Last week the president also insulted John Brennan, Michael Hayden, and James Clapper for criticizing his refusal to confront Putin.
Clapper said Trump was shown detailed evidence in January 2017 that Putin personally directed the cyber-espionage.
“This was the summit Putin waited for his entire life,” says Russia expert Alina Polyakova of the Brookings Institution.
The president repeatedly praised Putin’s outrageous suggestion that Russian security agents be allowed to interrogate U.S. officials whom Putin dislikes. The White House only reluctantly retracted this infamous idea after the Senate passed a 98-0 resolution denouncing it.
The danger is multiplied by the Kremlin controlling the global narrative by claiming Trump adopted Putin’s positions on western Ukraine and Syria in Helsinki.
This stirs further fears amongst America’s allies.
In January 2017, the joint intelligence report on election meddling that Trump received warned: “The Kremlin sought to advance its longstanding desire to undermine the US-led liberal democratic order.”
Russian foreign-policy experts in Moscow say that Putin believes the “collective West” that emerged after World War II is collapsing, including the NATO alliance and the European Union. Putin also sees U.S. democracy as troubled, while (illiberal) Russia is more stable.
The Russian leader hopes to exploit divisions within America, and undermine its institutions, with help from Trump, and to prevent a strong U.S. pushback against cyber-espionage (which Trump refuses to direct).
Putin undermined Mueller and accelerated Trump’s break with the U.S. intelligence community while playing on Trump’s illusion that the ex-KGB agent can be a good partner.
Despite indictments that track right back to Putin, Trump invited the Russian leader to the White House in the fall, to coincide with elections in which the Kremlin is still meddling.
“Useful Idiot” is a political term for a person who is manipulated into serving a political cause that is not their own.
It used to be applied to naifs who mouthed Soviet propaganda. Now it fits Trump.