Tag Archives: Vladimir Putin

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.

‘On behalf of the American people … ‘

The parsing has begun.

Donald J. Trump sat down with Vladimir Putin today and said, according to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, that he wanted to raise an issue of “concern to the American people.”

The issue is Russian hacking and alleged interference in our 2016 presidential election. The president apparently didn’t raise any personal concerns with Putin about what intelligence agencies have determined, that Russia sought to influence the election outcome.

He was speaking “on behalf of Americans” who are concerned.

It’s fair, in my view, to wonder whether Trump’s equivocation somehow weakens his standing with regard to Putin even more.

Tillerson insisted that Trump “pressed” Putin on the election hacking matter. He raised the issue with him more than once during their longer-than-scheduled meeting, according to Tillerson.

Fine. I get it. Good for the president for “pressing” Putin, if that’s what he really did.

If the secretary of state is correct, that the president was demanding answers to questions on the minds of the Americans back home, then I have to wonder whether Donald Trump expressed any personal dismay/anger/outrage over what occurred during this past year’s election.

Putin denies meddling … what now?

Donald J. Trump shook hands with Vladimir Putin today and then got right to the heart of the matter.

Did you meddle in our 2016 presidential election? Did your government try to influence the outcome to ensure that I would get elected? So it was that the president possibly asked his Russian colleague.

Putin’s response? I deny any involvement. My government did not meddle in your election.

OK, then. That settles it, yes? Hardly.

Obviously, I wasn’t in the room. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was there, though, and he said that Trump “pressed” Putin on the election meddling matter. I guess we might need to ask the secretary of state what “press” means to him, if not to the president.

What we don’t know yet is whether the president stood up for the intelligence agencies that have concluded that Russia did interfere with our 2016 electoral process. Nor we do know what the president might have said to Putin about what the United States would do in response, given what he intelligence experts have said to this point.

This kind of summit diplomacy is brand new to Donald Trump. Putin’s got a lengthy record of face-to-face meetings/confrontations with U.S. presidents as well as with other world leaders. Time will tell us soon whether Putin pushed Trump around in that meeting room.

That all said, I am heartened that the world leaders struck a cease fire deal in part of Syria. Time will tell us — probably very soon — whether the cease fire will stick. A previous one lasted only hours before falling apart.

Are we to believe Putin — the former KGB spy chief — when he denies Russian government efforts to meddle in our election?

Umm. I don’t think so.

Trump remains in Russia-meddling denial

Donald J. Trump got the question straight up and directly: Does he believe the Russians meddled in the 2016 presidential election?

How did the president respond to the question from NBC News’s Hallie Jackson today on the eve of the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany? Sure, Russia meddled, but so did other nations, according to Trump. He couldn’t say which nations. They’ve all been doing it for a long time, the president said.

Then he sailed off into what’s becoming the classic Trump tactic: diversion, deflection and denial. He then blamed President Barack Obama’s administration for failing to do anything about Russia when it knew in July of 2016 about reports of meddling. He mentioned that the election didn’t occur until November and then asked, rhetorically of course, “Why didn’t the Obama administration do anything about it?”

Good grief, Mr. President. That’s not the question. The reporter asked about what he believes occurred and whether he stands with the U.S. intelligence agencies’ assessment that Russia acted alone in seeking to corrupt the U.S. electoral process.

Oh, I fear this bodes poorly for the president’s meeting Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin and whether Trump is going to confront Putin directly on what seemingly the rest of the world apparently knows: that Russia got its hands quite dirty while interfering in the election of the president of the United States.

Trump and Putin: hoping for confrontation

Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin will be among the 20 world leaders gathering this week for an economic summit.

The two of them are going to meet for a full-blown bilateral summit in Hamburg, Germany. Do you know what that means? It means that the president of the United States will have a chance to confront the Russian president over the issue that has dominated the U.S. political discussion since the presidential inaugural.

No one has asked me for my opinion on this, but given that I write this blog and am entitled to offer it unsolicited, I’ll offer this bit of advice.

Mr. President, you need to cease this nicey-nicey talk about the Russians. They interfered in our 2016 electoral process and you need lay down the law much like your immediate predecessor did when he met with Putin in 2016.

I am not filled with supreme confidence that Trump will do that. He’s still a rookie on the world political stage. Sure, he’s been a “public figure” for decades, but this is quite unlike anything he’s ever experienced.

Trump has exhibited for months a maddening and outrageous reluctance to condemn the Russians for doing what U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded: that the Russians hacked into our electoral system and sought to influence the 2016 election; they intended to help Trump defeat Hillary Rodham Clinton. I get that the success of that effort remains under intense debate. What’s not in question is that the Russians did something.

Trump’s reaction has been to give the Russians cover by suggesting that other nations could have meddled as well in our election. He even mentioned some “400-pound guy” lying on his bed … good grief!

This will be the first Trump-Putin meeting ever. These men have never been in the same room together — even though Trump once suggested he had met Putin once. Oh well, what’s another lie?

The planned sit-down meeting between these men also means it will get the worldwide attention it deserves. It will be “on the record.” It won’t be just one of those handshake pass-by events. These men will have an agenda from which to build their discussion.

My strong hope is that the Trump team will make damn sure the president brings up the Russian involvement in the 2016 election. If it remains an unmentionable, my strong hunch is that the president’s many critics here at home are going to reach some scathing conclusions about where this story goes from here.

A ‘malignant presidency’?

Carl Bernstein knows a political malignancy when he sees one.

The famed journalist and author believes he is witnessing one at the moment that well might be metastasizing before our eyes.

Those of us of a certain age who pursued journalism as a career owe that choice in large part to the work that Bernstein did along with his Washington Post colleague and pal Robert Woodward. Together they uncovered the Mother of All Scandals that erupted in the wake of that “third-rate burglary” at the Watergate office complex in June 1972.

That was then. Bernstein is still in the game, although now as an author and TV news pundit/contributor.

Bernstein takes a hyper-dim view of what is transpiring with Donald J. Trump, the current president of the United States. According to CNN.com: “We’re in foreign territory,” Bernstein said, speaking on CNN’s “New Day.” “We have never been in a malignant presidency like this before. It calls on our leaders, it calls on our journalists to do a different kind of reporting, a different kind of dealing with this presidency and the President.”

Bernstein sounds fearful of where this might all end up with the president. The Russia probe, the alleged conflicts of business interest, the nepotism, the failure to unite the nation, the incessant tweeting and the tirades against the media, the incessant stream-of-consciousness lying … it’s all part and parcel of Trump’s still-developing presidency.

How does Trump govern? That seems to be the major question shadowing the president as he lurches from crisis to crisis.

He threatens members of his own party who don’t support his effort to replace the Affordable Care Act. Upon whom can he depend in Congress to have his back if he unleashes his venom against fellow Republicans? The president is about to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin, a man he’s never seen up close. Still, Trump continues to refuse to accept what U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded, which is that Putin and his gang of goons sought to influence the 2016 election outcome.

I’m pretty sure he carries a substantial anti-Trump bias as he offers his analysis of the current political climate. However, I am not going to dismiss this guy’s view out of hand.

Instead, I accept his challenge to the media in this country to stand up to the president and to do the job they are entitled to do, which is to hold the president accountable for his words and deeds.

As Bernstein said: “We have to … be kind of medical reporters right now. I don’t mean about the president’s psyche, but rather about every aspect of his presidency, and how and whether it is functioning, because many aspects are not functioning.”

POTUS and Putin: time for ‘frank’ talk

In short order, the president of the United States is going to shake hands with the president of Russia. They’ll sit down in a room and start talking about, oh, this and/or that.

Here will be the perfect opportunity for Donald J. Trump to look straight into Vladimir Putin’s steely eyes and give him holy hell for what numerous U.S. intelligence agencies have said: that Russian computer hackers sought to meddle in the U.S. presidential election this past year — and that they did so on orders from Putin himself.

Is this going to occur? Will the U.S. president have the moxie, the savvy, the guts to face down this other head of state?

And to think that such a discussion would just be a starting point in these two men’s relationship.

Of course, I am not privy to what the president will say to Putin. I am entitled, though, to offer an opinion or two on what he should say. My gut — along with my proverbial trick knee — tell me he needs to get directly to that point immediately.

History tells us that U.S.-Russian summit meetings are fraught with peril. In 1961, another rookie U.S. president traveled to Vienna to meet with the head of what then was known as the Soviet Union. Nikita Khrushchev thought he had taken the full measure of John F. Kennedy; he pushed the young president around, bullied him, threatened him.

It was reported at the time that President Kennedy made too many rookie mistakes in his first face-to-face meeting with the cantankerous Soviet leader. It turned out that the world’s leading communist made the rookie error.

Khrushchev miscalculated badly Kennedy’s resolve. The Soviets started building those missile bases the following year in Cuba. The president got word of it, huddled with his national security team, made a decision and then told the world of our reaction and what the cost would be to the Soviets if they were to launch an attack against any nation in the Western Hemisphere.

The cost? Annihilation. 

Check out JFK’s speech here:

Donald Trump isn’t prone to study history, so it’s not likely he’ll be interested in understanding that dangerous chapter.

The Russian meddling in our election, though, is on the minds of a lot of smart folks. It’s in all the papers, you know?

My hope would be for the president to talk directly and — in diplomatic parlance — “frankly” to his Russian colleague directly about what has consumed this nation since the election.

My fear is that Donald Trump will choke.

Prove me wrong, Mr. President.

What about Russian prisoners, Mr. President?

Donald John Trump flew to Florida and made a big show of how upset he is with the way Cuban government officials treat their political prisoners.

He vowed to hold on to many of the sanctions against the communist government until it releases more political detainees. It needs to pay more attention to human rights.

OK, Mr. President. How about the Russian government and its treatment of those who dissent? What do you intend to do to ensure that Russian President/strongman Vladimir Putin — the former KGB boss — treats those who oppose his policies with fairness, humanity and grants them the liberty to protest?

Do we apply the same standard to all despotic governments, or don’t we?

Let’s end the debate over whether Russians hacked us

Here’s a thought to ponder going ahead: Let’s all just stop arguing over whether the Russians — government agents or “patriots” — hacked into the U.S. electoral system while seeking to influence the 2016 election outcome.

Let us now settle on the fundamental question: Did the Donald John Trump presidential campaign commit treason by colluding with the Russians?

Former FBI Director James Comey had much of the nation enthralled for two hours today as he testified before the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee. He confirmed what 17 intelligence agencies have determined already: The Russians sought to influence the election. Russian President Vladimir Putin — one of the more untrustworthy individuals on the planet — said that Russian “patriots” might have been responsible for the deed.

Now we get to the Main Event. The Seventh Game. The Bottom of the Ninth Inning.

Special counsel Robert Mueller has been handed a huge mound of information to digest from his former colleague, Comey.

The president had said Wednesday when word of Comey’s testimony leaked out that he felt “vindicated” by what he heard. After today, I’m betting real American money the president feels a whole lot less vindicated.

No one can know with any degree of certainty whether Mueller is going to produce evidence of criminality on the part of the campaign or the president himself.

Comey’s dismissal as FBI director, as he was investigating the Trump campaign-Russia allegations, was shocking all by itself. Then came the crap storm of motives, reversals, changes in story and contradictions — from the president himself.

And in the midst of all this, Donald J. Trump — of all people — called Comey a “grandstander” and a “showboat.”

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/08/james-comey-robert-mueller-trump-case-file-239319

Kettle, met pot.

I do not believe a grandstanding showboat appeared today before he Senate panel. I believe the nation saw a meticulous lawyer and administrator who defended the agency he led from unfounded attacks by the president of the United States.

James Comey, moreover, has handed Robert Mueller a full arsenal of ammunition to use as he continues his arduous task of determining whether there was collusion with an foreign adversary to undermine our nation’s electoral process.