Dumb, yes, but a traitor? No
IT’S hard to defend Donald Trump’s performance at Monday’s press conference with Vladimir Putin, but it’s gloriously easy to exaggerate how bad it was.
Frankly, the reaction to the US president refusing to smash the Russian leader in front of the world’s cameras has been insane.
Former CIA chief and Obama adviser John Brennan panted that Trump had committed crimes that justified impeachment or even execution.
“Trump’s press conference performance rises to and exceeds the threshold of ‘high crimes and misdemeanours’,” he tweeted. “It was nothing short of treasonous.”
But even that wasn’t damning enough as media commentators competed for the most extreme condemnation of a president they loathe.
MSNBC contributor and former Watergate prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks took the prize, likening Trump’s comments to an act of war against America and to the night the Nazis unleashed their terror on the Jews: “His performance today will live in infamy as much as the Pearl Harbor attack or Kristallnacht.”
Meanwhile, the Democrats suggested the President had been blackmailed into being a Russian mole – a theory as wild as the “birther” claims that Barack Obama was actually a Nigerian.
“What do the Russians have on Donald Trump personally, financially, and politically?” sneered Nancy Pelosi, the Democrats’ leader in the House of Representatives.
“The answer to that question is the only thing that explains his behaviour and his refusal to stand up to Putin.”
What we’re seeing is actually another crazy battle in the Left’s war to make Trump seem an illegitimate president who stole the election with Russian help.
But check the transcript from Helsinki. What’s there to justify such hysteria?
Yes, Trump blundered after his meeting with Putin.
First, he blamed American failures in part for the recent freeze in relations with Russia: “I hold both countries responsible … I think we have all been foolish.”
He was right. But he was wrong to list some of America’s mistakes but none of Russia’s far worse ones, such as invading Ukraine and Georgia and supplying rebels with the rocket that accidentally shot down MH17.
Trump’s other crime was to seemingly believe Putin’s claim that Russia hadn’t interfered in the 2016 US election by stealing and publishing emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
“(Director of national intelligence) Dan Coats came to me and some others, they said they think it’s Russia,” Trump said.
“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 yesterday backtracked, saying he’d actually meant to say “any reason why it wouldn’t be”.
Is he lying? On Monday, to be fair, he didn’t contradict the conclusion of his intelligence agencies, but he was stupid to make Putin’s denials seem equally credible: “So I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today.”
So why didn’t Trump simply denounce Putin before the baying journalists?
For the Left, there’s joy in believing Trump is a traitor or that Putin has secret tapes of prostitutes urinating on Trump’s bed in a Moscow hotel – a smear from a dirt file paid for by the Clinton camp.
But how about a much simpler explanation: that Trump called this meeting with Putin not to smash him, but make peace.
As he said on Monday: “Constructive dialogue between the United States and Russia forwards the opportunity to open new pathways toward peace and stability in our world.”
To humiliate Putin would have been to destroy the whole point of the summit, where the leaders of the two superpowers tried to sort out their differences on Syria, North Korea, nuclear weapons and trade.
Yet at their press conference, the media was obsessed instead with baiting Trump into attacking Putin to prove he didn’t owe Putin for stealing an election for him.
And it worked, thanks to Trump’s great fault – his tender pride – plus his justified fury at attempts by the Democrats and media to delegitimise him as president.
Trump lost his temper: “There was no collusion at all … That was a clean campaign. I beat Hillary Clinton easily.”
It was then a small step from denying he’d colluded with Russia in the email hacking (almost certainly false) to seeming to deny there was any Russian meddling at all (almost certainly true).
So Trump was dumb. But a traitor?
Come on. He still opposed Russia’s taking of Ukraine and maintains tough sanctions on Russia while supplying Ukraine with offensive weapons.
What a malicious beat-up.
TO HUMILIATE PUTIN WOULD HAVE BEEN TO DESTROY THE WHOLE POINT OF THE SUMMIT
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