So the official White House transcript and video of the press conference in Helsinki has been doctored to remove a part of a question, asking whether Putin wanted Trump to win the election and directed his officials to help him do that. The edit of the material makes it seem like the first part of the question wasn’t asked, which changes the entire implication of the question. Now, one could argue that in the transcript, this omission could be the result of trying to catch several people talking at once, but the fact that the White House edited it out of the official video as presented by the White House, and even placed on YouTube, is…well it’s disturbing. To consciously edit out that portion shows intent to omit a telling admission from Putin and his government, especially in light of Trump’s recent, very public claim, that Russia did not want Trump in office. Beyond the possible legal implications (I mean, it’s an official government release, and there are specific laws not only regarding the handling of government documentation, but White House and presidential documentation specifically), it shows an alarming willingness to attempt to establish history as something other than what actually happened, and that should alarm EVERYONE. Trump lying is one thing. Trump giving the order for the official record in every capacity be altered to fit those lies is Orwellian in it’s scope.
So I’ve been really trying to process how Trump plays to this Russia backlash. Obviously it’s a big deal when even some of his most ardent supporters are really turned off by his rhetoric. And publicly siding with Russia regarding the election meddling was kind of a shocker. GOP stalwarts were essentially calling his behavior treasonous. It was bad. So when he walked back his statements the next day only by suggesting that when he said “would” instead of “wouldn’t” when saying he didn’t know why it would be Russia who interfered, it was a total slip of the tongue…well I expected such a blatant lie not to work as well as it did. I mean it wasn’t just one switch up of “would” and “wouldn’t”. He went on several diatribes on Monday, both in his initial statement, in his Hannity Interview and his Tucker Carlson interview, shoring up the position that he didn’t have faith in his intelligence community, that he thinks Putin is great, and that Putin’s word holds more water. The idea that he could simply claim this was a slip of the tongue issue is a lie, for no other reason than that it literally contradicts 24 hours of statements to the contrary. Yet, GOP congressmen, apologist pundits, and generally everyone who had this moment of clarity regarding who Trump is, immediately seemed to say “That makes sense” and went back to calling the liberals a bunch of liars distorting the truth. And the world around us all collectively sighed…
Two days before his summit with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Trump declared that the mainstream media would fake news the heck out of his meeting. He assured everyone that he would not be treated fairly. It was a good thing you could get the real, fair and balanced word on the situation from Fox News. If you wanted the real inside dope on Helsinki, Fox News wouldn’t steer you wrong. So what did Fox News have to say regarding Trump’s meeting? Abby Huntsman, one of the hosts of Fox and Friends, Trump’s favorite show, said that he was “throwing his own people under the bus”. Brian Kilmeade, another host of the show said his rhetoric was “ridiculous”. In fact, all across the network, Fox News was breaking ranks to voice their dissent, that is until you get to Prime Time editorial shows. Sean Hannity was sure to try and spin this the best way he could, by bringing Trump on to clarify the things he said, but even Hannity could hide his obvious discomfort at some of the things Trump was saying that night. Trump may have tried to backtrack on his positions the next day, but you can’t stuff that monster back in it’s box.
Mind the Exit 