Opposing view: President takes the hard road to address Russia

The Helsinki summit between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin was rich in opportunity for those who still cling to the belief that Trump owed his election to Russian meddling. #TreasonSummit was trending on Twitter, giving rise to all manner of wild accusations.

Of course, Mr. Trump used the same personal touch at the summit with Kim Jong Un, and we know that the president places great value in establishing such direct ties. But the conspiracy theorists would have us think Trump and Putin were locked in a room hatching schemes, which shows how unserious the president’s critics are.

The mere fact of a U.S. president seeking better relations with Russia should not be controversial. President Obama certainly did his best. Who can forget his 2012 hot-mic moment assuring outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he would have “more flexibility” in dealing with Moscow after the election? Or Hillary Clinton’s famous 2009 “Russian reset”?

For Democrats to invoke the ghost of Joe McCarthy and cry treason has more than a whiff of hypocrisy. Besides, do they want relations to get worse? Should the U.S. purposely freeze out the second (or maybe first) largest nuclear power in the world? Yet if Trump took a hard line, critics would say he was trying to conceal his collusion, so it’s a no-win situation.

The easiest thing politically would be to avoid Russia. The president did not have to attend this summit, especially with the midterm elections months away and special counsel Robert Mueller’s report looming.

But Trump did not become president by doing the easy or expected thing. A summit with Putin is the perfect Trumpian way to say to his frantic critics that he couldn’t care less what they think. And it may force the more thoughtful ones to consider the possibility that Trump is right, and the Russian collusion narrative has been a lie.