Tag Archives: Vladimir Putin

Undisclosed meeting? What are we supposed to think?

Donald J. Trump and Vladimir Putin had another meeting recently that no one knew about … until now.

Hmmm. And the president continues to keep secrets that need not be kept? Is that what’s going on here?

The two presidents met for more than two hours in Hamburg, Germany the other day. Trump “pressed” the Russian president on whether his government interfered with the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Putin reportedly denied any such involvement. Of course he would deny it.

Then the men shook hands and went their separate ways. Then Trump decided to meet privately with Putin for more than an hour. The only other person in the room was Putin’s translator.

What did they talk about? What do the heads of state of two of the world’s most powerful nations say to each other? Did any of it — anything at all — have something to do with that “Russia thing,” the hacking into our electoral process?

They call this kind of thing “rolling disclosure.” It lends itself to whispering, conjecture, speculation. They only way for any of that to be dispelled is for the principals to tell the public in a forthright manner what they discussed and the context that they discussed it.

According to The Washington Post: “But Trump’s newly-disclosed conversation with Putin at the G20 dinner is likely to stoke further criticism, including perhaps from some fellow Republicans in Congress, that he is too cozy with the leader of a major U.S. adversary.”

Fox News White House correspondent Ed Henry sought to brush the questions aside, suggesting that “other media” are casting this secret meeting in a negative light. There could be an explanation, Henry said.

Sure thing, hoss. Then we need to know precisely what these two world leaders said to each other. Absent that, what is the world expected to think?

 

Bush ethics lawyer: Why not give Putin clearance, too?

Richard Painter teaches law at the University of Minnesota.

He once served as ethics adviser to President George W. Bush, so his Republican credentials are well-known. However, he’s demonstrating that ethical conduct ought to ignore partisan consideration.

Professor Painter is furious, fuming, outraged over what he believes is a lack of ethical decorum permeating Donald J. Trump’s administration. Exhibit A: the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Painter believes Kushner should surrender his top-secret White House security clearance because of his numerous contacts with Russian government officials who might have been involved in that Russian hacking and their efforts to meddle in the 2016 presidential election.

Painter said via Twitter that Kushner’s clearance needs to be revoked, but if the government is going to allow the young man to keep it, then it should just give one to Russian President Vladimir Putin, too.

Check out The Hill report.

Painter has been making the rounds for several months commenting on Donald J. Trump. He isn’t a fan. Perhaps he owes his antagonism to the president’s vocal criticism of President Bush’s handling of the Iraq War. It might have something to do with the insults that Trump hurled at the former president’s brother, Jeb, during the 2016 GOP presidential primary campaign.

Whatever. Professor Painter isn’t holding back.

I cannot blame him for demanding that Donald Trump seek to develop some understanding that “government ethics” need not be an oxymoron.

Another stunning example of incompetence

How many more examples of presidential incompetence do we need to witness?

Here’s the latest one to emerge from the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany: Donald J. Trump announced a joint cyber-security agreement with none other than Vladimir Putin.

That’s it: The president of the United States and the president of Russia agreed in principle to work on ways to prevent governments from hacking into others’ systems.

Oh, but wait! Twelve hours later, Trump tweeted (of course!) a change of heart; we won’t enter into that agreement with Russia after all.

Imagine that. The president backed out totally from an agreement he had his White House communications staff announce to the world.

Intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia hacked our electoral process in 2016. Then the Russian president puts this idea out in his meeting with the U.S. president — who then buys into it.

All the while, Trump keeps dissing our spooks’ expertise on this matter and then sidles up to the government believed to have sought to influence the outcome of our presidential election.

How does a White House staff at any level cope with this kind of capriciousness? How do Cabinet officers know whether to zig or zag as they try to keep the president in their sights?

Is there any wonder at all — having watched this administration stumble, bumble and fumble its way — why the president is having trouble filling so many vacancies?

Did POTUS strengthen U.S. at G20?

Donald Trump has been home for a couple of days, so it’s good to look back just a bit at his second overseas trip as president of the United States.

Did the president strengthen the U.S. standing in the world? Do our allies and our foes see us as stronger now that Trump is president?

I cannot possibly believe that is the case. Indeed, much of the chatter since the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany has centered on Trump’s isolation from the rest of the world.

He has pulled the United States out of the Paris climate change accord, and has been condemned roundly by virtually every other nation in the world that remains committed to the accord. And get a load of this: The other two nations that didn’t sign on in the first place — Nicaragua and Syria — refused because the accord didn’t go far enough. Trump’s reason? He wants to protect U.S. jobs he said are being harmed by onerous regulations.

Then we have that meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump reportedly “pressed” Putin on reports of Russian meddling in our 2016 presidential election. Putin denied it. Then we heard that Trump and Putin had agreed on a joint effort to crack down on cyber-hacking — which is akin to asking Latin American drug lords to craft a plan to stop drug trafficking into the United States.

Trump’s emphasis on “putting America first” isn’t playing well in a world with nations that are increasingly connected. His pre-summit statements about Germany, China, Mexico, Canada and Australia haven’t been forgotten by those countries’ heads of state and government.

Have we restored American greatness on the world stage?

No. Indeed, I believe the president has reduced our once-starring role as the world’s most indispensable nation to second-tier status.

Not the dumbest idea, but it’s close

Lindsey Graham said this in response today to a question about a joint U.S.-Russia initiative to combat cyber hacking: “It’s not the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard, but it’s pretty close.”

That was among some of the critiques that the South Carolina Republican U.S. senator offered on Donald J. Trump’s meeting with Vladimir Putin in Hamburg, Germany.

Graham went on during his interview with “Meet the Press” moderator Chuck Todd: “He gave a really good speech in Poland, President Trump did, and he had what I think is a disastrous meeting with President Putin. Two hours and 15 minutes of meetings. (Secretary of State Rex) Tillerson and Trump are ready to forgive and forget when it comes to cyber-attacks on the American election of 2016.”

Donald Trump, to no one’s surprise, is calling his second overseas trip as president a success. The Putin meeting, by many accounts, was anything but a victory for the president. He “pressed” Putin on allegations that Russian government officials meddled in our 2016 election; Putin denied it. Then the two men announce this joint effort to combat cyber attacks? Are you kidding? Sadly, no. They aren’t.

Trump once again revealed that he appears to be the only world leader on the planet who refuses to accept that Russia launched an attack on our electoral process. He keeps giving the Russians cover. He keeps saying things like “We don’t really know” who is responsible for the hacking of our system. Actually, a lot of intelligence experts in this country do know who did it. They say it’s the Russians.

Meanwhile, U.S. politicians from both political parties are demanding that Russia be held accountable for what they did. Instead, the president wants to form a partnership with them to put an end to the Russians’ effort to subvert our electoral system?

I agree with Sen. Graham. It’s a pretty damn dumb idea.

Sen. Graham tells it bluntly about Trump, Russia

Donald J. Trump needs to hear a lot more blunt talk from members of his own political party.

He got it today from U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican, who pulled zero punches when talking about the president’s “blind spot” as it regards Russia, Vladimir Putin and the Russian effort to undermine our electoral process.

Sen. Graham said this, among other things, on “Meet the Press” this morning: “When it comes to Russia, I am dumbfounded,” Graham said of Trump’s actions. “I am disappointed and, at the end of the day, he’s hurting his presidency by not embracing the fact that Putin’s a bad guy who tried to undercut our democracy and he’s doing it all over the world. He is literally the only person that I know of that has any doubt about what Russia did in 2016.”

Read more of what Graham said here.

The reality is that the president and Putin met in Hamburg, Germany, in advance of the G20 summit and Trump has decided it’s now time to “move forward” after hearing Putin deny Russian effort to meddle in our 2016 presidential election.

That’s it. Vlad says he didn’t do anything and that’s good enough for me … or so Trump seems to be saying.

Graham is having none of it. Nor should he. Nor should the intelligence professionals who have concluded that the Russians sought to influence the election outcome.

I agree with Graham, moreover, that whatever the Russians did likely didn’t affect the outcome. Trump was elected fair and square. However, the point of Graham’s tirade is that Trump shouldn’t accept Putin’s denial while denigrating — on foreign soil, no less — the U.S. intelligence apparatus’s capability, which Trump did in Hamburg.

Will any of this straight talk matter to the president? No one believes it will change this man’s point of view. His blind spot toward Russia and Putin, though, is “hurting his presidency.”

That means, to me, that he’s hurting the nation.

‘Everybody knows’ Russia meddled in election

Has the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations gone rogue? Is Nikki Haley speaking out of turn when she seems to dispute the president’s view of who hacked into our nation’s election in 2016?

Haley has said that “everybody knows that Russia meddled in our election.” She made the remarks in TV interviews to be broadcast Sunday.

Actually, Mme. Ambassador, while everybody may know that to be true, not quite everybody is willing to say so out loud, on the record, in public.

One of the more prominent officials who remains publicly unconvinced happens to be Donald J. Trump. Intelligence agencies have concluded the Russians meddled; politicians from both political parties have said the same thing.

The president? He keeps giving the Russians political cover by saying that “other countries” might have interfered, too. He met Russian President Vladimir Putin this week in Hamburg, Germany, and supposed “pressed” Putin on what the Russians did. Putin denied doing anything, as if he expects the rest of us to believe the word of a former communist KGB spy.

Haley has broken with Trump already on Russia. She has been harsh in her critique of Putin’s government, while the president continues to pull his punches.

Now she has said what just about the entire civilized world has come to accept: that the Russians sought to undermine our electoral process, that they in effect declared war on our system of government.

If only the president would concur.

Putting ‘America first’? Pffftt!

Donald J. Trump was elected president while vowing that he would always “put America first.”

Today the president sat in a room with Russian President Vladimir Putin and, if we are to believe some analyses of that meeting, agreed with Putin that it was time to “move forward” and stop obsessing over reports that Russia violated U.S. electoral sovereignty during the 2016 election.

Is that how you “put America first,” Mr. President?

Trump brought up the Russian hacking matter with Putin. He said he was speaking on behalf of Americans who are concerned about it. He didn’t seem to take any personal offense at what is widely accepted as fact, that the Russians sought to meddle in our electoral process.

Once again, has the president decided that putting America first is limited to, oh, certain economic matters? Doesn’t it include national sovereignty? Or the integrity of our electoral system? Is the president going to continue to dismiss the American intelligence community’s assessment of the Russian hacking matter while accepting Putin’s denial?

Mr. President, do you really intend to “put America first,” or was that just another empty campaign platitude?

Trump tweets about this on eve of big meeting?

Donald J. Trump had a full day that began with a typically bizarre fit of petulance from the president of the United States.

Trump was set to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin. They talked about Russian meddling with U.S. electoral processes; they announced a cease fire in parts of Syria; they agreed to move forward with bilateral relations.

Big stuff, right?

So what does the president tweet about this morning? He launched into a Twitter tirade against former Hillary Clinton campaign director John Podesta. Trump said “everybody” at the G20 summit he is attending is “talking about” Podesta and that ridiculous e-mail controversy that engulfed the Clinton campaign.

Everybody is talking about it? Every(bleeping)body, Mr. President?

I’m not going to dive into the details of what Trump tweeted. I do feel the need to wonder: What goes through the president’s mind when he is facing such a huge bilateral meeting? Can’t this guy focus on the issue of the day — which has done at all to do with Podesta, Hillary Clinton, or e-mails?

Podesta fired back. He called Trump a “whack job.”

I’ll just conclude that the president lacks anything approaching the kind of singular focus he needs to meet the huge challenges of the office he occupies.

Hold Putin ‘accountable’ for hacking

House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul wants Donald J. Trump to hold the president of Russia “accountable” for the Russian meddling in our electoral process.

It seems to be apparent that the U.S. president didn’t do as the Texas Republican lawmaker do what he wants.

The two leaders met today in Hamburg, Germany, exchanged some good tidings, and then the president reportedly pressed Putin on the Russia meddling matter.

Did he demand answers? Did the president tell Putin he’d better knock it off or else? Apparently not.

McCaul told The Texas Tribune: “It’s the elephant in the room, and it’s an important issue to the American people, and it’s important for the American president to raise it with him to let him know that we know it happened, and we’re not going to stand for that, and there will be consequences.”

Punishment on tap for Russians?

McCaul speaks clearly about the need for the United States to make it abundantly clear to Russia and its president. Yes, we “know it happened.” It appears that the only people on Earth who won’t accept what intelligence officials have concluded about Russian meddling are Donald J. Trump and Vladimir Putin.