At Summit With Russia, Trump Betrays His Country in Plain Sight

[DonViejo]

By Jonathan Chait
@jonathanchait

July 16, 2018
1:48 pm

Standing next to Vladimir Putin, after a meeting Putin had requested, President Trump was asked by a reporter if he believed the findings of his own intelligence agencies that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election. He began by floating unfounded accusations that the FBI had ignored his opponent’s misdeeds. Then he proceeded to express his doubts. “All I can do is ask the question,” said Trump. “My people came to me, Dan Coats came to me, they said they think it’s Russia. I have President Putin, he just said it’s not Russia. I’ll say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be.”

Trump told the world he trusts the denial of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin — the very man who did the deed! — over his own government’s intelligence. Trump can’t think of a reason why Putin would have interfered in the election. The fact that Russia has interfered in multiple elections, the fact its propaganda arm had broadcast its preference for Trump, the fact American intelligence concluded Russia intervened, that Robert Mueller has produced multiple indictments detailing evidence of this interference, all mean less to him than Putin’s say-so. Putin admitted at this press conference he wanted Trump to win.

My recent story argues that we have underestimated the possibility that the Russia scandal is much worse than it looks, that the depth and extent of the president’s covert ties to Russia might run deeper and longer than many people expect. Even for those of us harboring serious suspicions about this, Trump’s performance in Helsinki was stunning. I expected some artifice, some superficial gestures of Trumpian independence, perhaps some finger-wagging for show at Russia’s naughty behavior, and assurances it would not recur. What transpired instead was far worse, and far more blatant. Trump is engaged in an act of open betrayal against his own country.

In the run-up to the press conference, Trump made a series of staggering comments. He congratulated Putin for the brilliant success of hosting the World Cup, ignoring the corruption that enabled Russia to pull off this coup. Asked by a reporter to name America’s greatest foe, he named the European Union. Even more incredibly, he blamed hostility between the United States and Russia on the United States:

This tweet set the predicate for one of the most revealing questions at the press conference. “Do you hold Russia at all accountable for anything in particular? And if so, what would you — what would you consider them — that they are responsible for?,” asked a reporter. In response to this, Trump did not mention any of the following: Russian encroachments on Georgia; Ukraine; the hacking of Democratic Party emails; repeated murder attempts on foreign soil, or the missile attack on Malaysian Airlines. Instead he insisted, “I think that the United States has been foolish. I think we’ve all been foolish.” He then started to denounce the Mueller probe as “a disaster for our country.”

In his characteristically trollish fashion, Putin offered to let American investigators interview some suspects in Russia in return for letting Russian investigators come to the United States to interview Bill Browder, a dissident Russian expatriot. Putin’s presumption either that Browder’s alleged financial crime (tax evasion) is equivalent to Russia’s theft of American emails, or that such a trade could somehow advance the cause of legitimate justice, is a sick joke.

more
https://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/07/trump-betrays-his-country-for-russia-in-plain-sight.html

[Blue_Roses]

1. Disgusting

Simply disgusting.

[emulatorloo]

2. Rec and bookmarking for later. Chait's work is always excellent.

[Stuart G]

3. Yep, that is what he did...k and r.