‘Trump’s actions disgrace America on the world stage...’
THE unmitigated disaster that is Donald Trump has officially brought to an end the era of American leadership on the world stage.
After denouncing the European Union as a “foe”, antagonising his NATO allies and undermining Theresa May on his visit to the UK, the US president’s summit with Russian thug Vladimir Putin on Monday saw him wave the white ceremonial flag of surrender.
The enduring image of Trump’s summit with Putin in Helsinki will be that of a US president kowtowing to his Russian counterpart.
The same Russian counterpart who stands accused of murdering his political opponents, of supporting brutal dictators, condoning an Iranian nuclear state and launching attacks on the soil of America’s most staunch ally – Britain.
But the bitterest pill for Americans to swallow was his betrayal, when he suggested he found Putin’s “powerful” denial at least as persuasive as the US intelligence community’s unanimous finding that Russia intervened in the 2016 election.
Not stopping there, he then launched another baseless attack on the FBI, while giving his apparent approval of a patently deceitful offer by Putin to help with the investigation of special counsel Robert Mueller.
In all respects Trump appeared to align himself with the Kremlin, against American law enforcement, in front of the Russian ruler and a global audience.
Trump cowered when he should have confronted, he deflected when he should have been definitive, he ran when he should have been taking to task the tyrannical leader of a nation whose military has attacked American and British democracy. In all, he disgraced his country on foreign soil.
It apears that as Trump sees it, war crimes in Syria, Russia’s invasions of Ukraine and Georgia, the shooting down of a Malaysian civilian airliner over Ukraine and poison attacks in Britain are morally comparable to the policies pursued by previous US administrations.
There used to be no doubt that American leaders could be counted on to defend the interests of the democratic alliance it led.
Ronald Reagan did so in 1987 when he told Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down” the Berlin Wall, while George H.W. Bush stood up to Russia by telling Moscow that Germany would remain in NATO after unification in 1990.
More recently, Barack Obama put Putin in his place before the 2016 election when he told him to stop its cybercrimes before going on to impose sanctions.
It remains a mystery why this president, unlike any of his Republican or Democratic predecessors, is unwilling to call out Russian dishonesty.
He has no trouble shooting his mouth off when he is in the company of America’s European allies and he denounces the news media as “enemies of the people”.
But put him next to Putin and other dictators, and he turns to jelly.
It is clear is that he is a president way out of his depth and he is getting America deeper and deeper into trouble. In insisting “there was no collusion” with Russia and refusing to acknowledge the plain facts about Moscow’s behaviour, while trashing his own country’s justice system, he openly colluded with the leader of a hostile power.
Sensing the growing backlash, America’s man-child president launched an extraordinary damage limitation exercise on Tuesday. Backtracking on the comments he made in front of the Russian leader, Trump claimed he ‘misspoke’, and that he meant he doesn’t see why Moscow “wouldn’t” be responsible for meddling in the US election when he had said “would”.
“The sentence should have been, ‘I don’t see any reason why I wouldn’t, or why it wouldn’t be Russia,’” instead of “why it would”, Trump insisted.
His pathetic defence came as it emerged that Trump again refused to say the Russians had meddled in a Fox interview recorded between his summit with Putin and his clarification on Tuesday.
It just didn’t add up and the American people quite rightly didn’t buy it, with one poll revealing that more than 94% believe he was lying . . . again.