Tag Archives: Vladimir Putin

International news

Trump and Putin by themselves? What can go wrong?

Donald J. Trump and Vladimir Putin are going to meet later this month in Helsinki, Finland.

You know that already.

Here’s the kicker. The two men are going to spend some time by themselves, with only an interpreter present, in the same room.

There won’t be any senior aides. No secretary of state. No foreign minister. No national security aides.

Just the two of them.

Wow! What can go wrong with that?

Putin’s a battle-hardened veteran of summits with U.S. presidents. Trump is, um, not so experienced at this level of diplomacy — and I use the term “diplomacy” with extreme caution as it regards the president.

I’m jittery in the extreme about what Trump might give away to Putin in that one-on-one session with the former head of the KGB, the spy agency that used to dig up dirt for the Soviet Union.

Oh, and do you believe Trump is going to challenge Putin in any meaningful way about the Russian meddling in our 2016 election?

You can stop laughing any time now.

national news

Senate panel takes command of the obvious

The U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee has weighed in with what the rest of the country — except for perhaps one man — already knows.

The Russians meddled in our 2016 presidential election and worked to elect Donald J. Trump as president of the United States.

Senators have concurred with what every intelligence expert in this country — and some around the world — have concluded. The Russians attacked our electoral process.

According to The Hill: “The Committee has spent the last 16 months reviewing the sources, tradecraft and analytic work underpinning the Intelligence Community Assessment and sees no reason to dispute the conclusions,” said Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) said in a statement.

Did you note that Burr is a Republican? That he’s the chairman of the panel? That he has done what his GOP colleagues on the House Intelligence Committee failed to do, which is issued a bipartisan conclusion?

Trump, meanwhile, continues to give the Russians a pass. He won’t condemn their actions as a virtual act of war on our electoral system. He won’t scorch Russian President Vladimir Putin the way he has, say, the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement communities. Justice Department and FBI leaders have been vilified by the president, who cannot bring himself to say publicly what intelligence experts have said for months, that the Russians meddled in our election.

The Hill reports: All in all, the Senate panel’s report was a unflinching contradiction of many of the core claims made by Trump allies in the House. 

Read The Hill story here.

Will the president take this latest confirmation any more seriously than he has the previous reports? Absolutely not!

Indeed, he’s getting ready to meet with Putin in a few days in Helsinki, Finland. Don’t expect the president to criticize the Russian strongman over his attack on our election.

International news

What about those nuke sites, Mr. President?

The question of the day for Donald John Trump Sr. is this: Do you still believe Kim Jong Un is to be trusted after he promised to “work toward” ending his nuclear weapons ambitions?

Those darn satellite surveillance pictures generally don’t lie. They are revealing that the North Koreans are accelerating their nuclear weapons development, not scaling them back as Kim supposedly promised when he and Trump met in Singapore.

Trump came out of that meeting singing the praises of the guy he once disparaged as Little Rocket Man. He sounded so trusting of the guy, kind of like the way he sounds when talking about Russian strongman/president Vladimir Putin.

One doesn’t “make America great again” by being made to look like a fool on the world stage, Mr. President.

International news

Putin to abide by the law? Imagine that!

Vladimir Putin, the man so admired by Donald John Trump Sr., says he’s going to step down as Russian president by 2024 — in accordance with the Russian constitution.

Well, shut my mouth and send me to Siberia!

It reminds me of American politicians who boast from campaign lecturns about how they are faithful to their wives. So many of them, though, turn out to be quite unfaithful.

I’ll have to wait for Vladimir Putin to actually deliver on his pledge to, um, obey the laws of his land. “In the constitution it’s clearly written that nobody can serve more than two terms in a row. … I intend to abide by this rule,” he said.

That’s big of him, don’t you think?

national news, political news

Tell the whole story about ‘collusion,’ Mr. President

That silly Donald Trump just cannot tell the truth about anything.

For instance, he declared this week in the presence of the media and the Japanese prime minister that the U.S. House Intelligence Committee has absolved the president of any “collusion” with Russians who meddled in our 2016 presidential election.

Wrong! Double wrong! Triple wrong!

The committee did nothing of the sort. The panel’s Republican majority issued a partisan statement ending the committee’s investigation. Intelligence Committee Democrats had no part in the statement. The panel’s GOP members decided to protect the president’s backside by issuing a statement that has no basis in fact.

The collusion issue hasn’t yet been determined finally by anyone. Special counsel Robert Mueller continues to look into it. The Senate Intelligence Committee also is continuing its work on this complicated matter.

Yet the president continues to insist repeatedly that there was “no collusion” between his campaign or himself personally and the Russian goons who hacked into our electoral system.

They launched an attack on our political process. They presented a clear and present danger to the integrity of our system of government. The president still won’t say it out loud. He still keeps giving Russian President Vladimir Putin political cover on that issue.

So, Mr. President, knock off the lying. I know I’m making an impossible request of the Liar in Chief, but I have to make it anyway.

International news

Why not just send him detailed plans? Hmm?

What happened to Donald J. Trump’s alleged penchant for unpredictability?

The president is now telling Russia to “get ready” for air strikes against Syrian targets in response to dictator Bashar al Assad’s latest gassing of civilians, including children.

How does this work? Do the Russians now harden their targets to lessen their losses in the event of an attack? Then there’s the warning that Russian strongman Vladimir Putin plans to “target” U.S. military targets in response to a retaliatory strike.

Trump keeps telling us he likes being unpredictable. He wants to keep our foes and friends alike guessing what we’ll do next. Isn’t that what he has said? Over and over?

This man is playing a dangerous game of chicken.

He is out of control!

As for Assad, he needs to be arrested and ordered to stand trial on charges that he has committed crimes against humanity.

International news

Yes, Mr. POTUS, you need to act

You aren’t likely to believe this, but I’ll say it anyway.

I truly want Donald Trump to do the right thing regarding a possible U.S. response to Syria’s latest use of chemical weapons on innocent Syrian civilians — including women and children.

I also want the president to keep shining the light of accountability on the Russian government, which has sponsored Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad’s brutality. Trump said the Russians could pay a heavy price if the United States decides to use military force against the Syrians.

Does that mean Vladimir Putin — who has escaped much of the fiery rhetoric that comes from Trump — will pay a price, too?

I do hope so.

I do not want U.S. troops to remain in Syria. I do not want us to get swept up in the civil war that has killed more than 400,000 Syrians.

If the president is going to strike a tough-guy posture with regard to crimes against humanity, he needs also to single out Russia, which is wallowing in the filth of those crimes in Syria.

I am among millions of Americans who cannot understand why Trump has gone so soft on Putin and the government he leads. I also am among those Americans who is waiting for some sign that Trump’s infatuation with Putin has ended.

Finally!

International news

Is this ‘leading from behind’?

I cannot resist asking the question: Is the president of the United States “leading from behind” with his decision to join in the expulsion of Russian “diplomats”?

About two dozen nations have joined a sort of class-action expulsion of Russian officials as a way to punish the Russian government over its poisoning of a former spy and his daughter in Great Britain.

The United States joined that effort. Indeed, Donald Trump has ordered the closing of the Russian consulate in Seattle, citing its proximity to the giant Boeing aircraft assembly plant and the big U.S. Navy base in nearby Bremerton, Wash.

Don’t misunderstand this point: I applaud the president for joining this allied effort to punish the Russians. They are bad actors on the world stage.

However, we heard a drumbeat of criticism from Republicans that then-President Barack Obama was “leading from behind” on issues relating to, oh, Syria, Libya and the continuing war against international terror. Critics accused the president of failing to take the lead on diplomatic and military efforts.

So, does that criticism apply here? The president of the world’s most powerful nation has acquired some valuable political cover by joining other nations in this punishment of Russia, which is governed by that former KGB spy, Vladimir Putin.

Doesn’t the world’s pre-eminent military and economic power have an obligation to take the lead, rather than stand among the crowd?

International news

Obama congratulated Putin, too? Hold on!

So, critics of the media on the right have become fond in recent days of defending Donald J. Trump’s congratulatory phone call to Vladimir Putin. They’re using an interesting — if nonsensical — argument.

Trump called Putin the other day against the advice of his national security team. He congratulated the Russian strongman on his re-election in what many have called a “sham election.” His soon-to-be-former national security adviser H.R. McMaster said that Trump shouldn’t congratulate Putin because of corollary issues that have clouded U.S.-Russia relations.

The president’s phone call has gotten plenty of criticism. I’ve joined the chorus of critics on this blog.

The push back was immediate. Trump defenders point out that Barack H. Obama congratulated Putin on his re-election in 2012.

Whoa! Hold on here! Let’s examine briefly the situation and how it compares with the here and now.

Vladimir Putin was a bad guy in 2012. I get that. He is worse now. Why? Oh, let’s see. He has meddled in our 2016 presidential election and is likely going to meddle in our midterm election this year, let alone in other countries’ elections; he used nerve gas on a former Soviet spy and his daughter.

President Obama did not have issues such as those on the table when he chatted with Putin in 2012. Donald Trump had a lot of them to toss at Putin when he called him just the other day.

There’s the difference.

International news

Leak complicates an already complicated problem

Donald J. Trump’s congratulatory phone call to Vladimir Putin was bad enough. He shouldn’t have slapped the Russian president on the back for winning a “sham election,” as Republican U.S. Sen. John McCain has described it.

He should have taken Putin down for meddling in our 2016 election and for reports that Russian officials poisoned a former spy and his daughter in the United Kingdom. The president didn’t say a word about either of those things … reportedly!

Now, though, it gets seriously complicated.

Someone inside the West Wing, inside the president’s inner circle, likely leaked to the Washington Post that Trump congratulated Putin against the advice of his national security team.

Let’s roll this one around for a moment.

The president is rightfully furious that someone would leak this information to the media. I understand his anger. Please note that no one is denying the guts of what is being reported. The National Security Council implored Trump to avoid making a call in the first place, but if he were to do so to avoid offering any congratulations.

I don’t know which is worse: that Trump would ignore the advice of his national security team or that someone with access to this kind of highly sensitive information would be so emboldened to leak it to the public.

This poses a couple of key questions. 1. What kind of “extreme vetting” did the president and White House chief of staff John Kelly use to ensure these secrets would be protected? 2. And what in the world is Donald Trump thinking — if he is thinking at all — if he can defy the advice of some smart national security aides who understand how it looks for the president to continue to soft-pedal Russia’s attack on our electoral system?

Trump once boasted he knows more about international terrorists “than the generals, believe me.” Does this guy also know more about how to handle highly complicated bilateral relationships than the “best people” with whom he has surrounded himself — and who implored him to use extreme caution in talking to Vladimir Putin?

This guy, the president of the United States, is out of control.