RICHARD BAEHR: TRUMP, PUTIN AND HELSINKI
” Neither I nor anyone else other than two translators, knows what went on when Trump met Putin yesterday. The press conference afterwords was not the President’s finest moment. Sometimes he seems eager to make already agitated political enemies and reporters (the latter a subset of the former) go completely insane with rage at statements that are really unnecessary unless he is merely goading them into an over-reaction. Presidents meet with leaders of countries who are adversaries all the time. American Presidents have met with Russian leaders throughout the Cold War.
I am not one who believes the recent Russian behavior or the current tensions between the two countries is anywhere near as heated or dangerous as in earlier periods- the Cuban missile crisis, the Berlin blockades, the 1980s. Of course most journalists writing today were born after these events and are ignorant of history . So Trump meeting Putin was fine.
Bibi Netanyahu has met repeatedly with Putin to make Israel’s red lines in Syria clear to the Russians. He seems to have made some progress. It is possible Russia will choose to stay in Syria and continue to support Assad, but rely less on Iran and push them away from a direct confrontation with Israel. The fact that Israel came up in the press conference suggests it came up in the meeting.
For me, this kind of substantive discussion matters more than whether Russia tried to interfere with our election . I believe they did, and they have done this before with US elections, and in other countries as well. Obama team members seem to have become concerned about this interference after the fact, but not before when they could have addressed it. And of course, the United States and other countries also interfere in other countries’ elections. .
Both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama did whatever they could to destroy Bibi Netanyahu’s chances of winning re-election as Prime Minister. Whether the Russians interfered is a separate issue from whether the Trump campaign worked with them.
On one issue, there is a good deal of evidence, though nothing would suggest the Russian effort made any difference in the outcome. On the other issue, after millions of dollars spent on the Mueller investigation, and Congressional committees spending years on the subject, there is nothing yet to prove “collusion” between Russia and the campaign.
Trump is inarticulate at times in separating the two, and it is possible to admit one and deny the other. Trump’s critics are eager to conflate the two. Hillary Clinton never campaigned in Wisconsin. She barely spent any time in Michigan either and almost nothing in ads in the two states, though her total campaign spending more than doubled Trump’s campaign expenditures. Trump made twice as many appearances before much bigger crowds in the battleground states than Clinton did.
If you hate Trump and want to blame Putin, or Comey, or Trump campaign collaborators for his victory, be my guest. I think the Democrats nominated an awful candidate-someone who despised and ridiculed half the population and was uncomfortable getting out of bed in the morning without a poll or advisors telling her what to wear. . The Russian effort was trivial, a fraction of 1% of the spending by either campaign.
Russian facebook posts moved voters? Really? Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump AFTER the Access Hollywood incident. This tells you all you need to know about how good a candidate she was.”
Comments are closed.
