At a certain point, it stopped being surprising that Donald Trump would take Vladimir Putin’s side in regards to…well anything really. He has made it perfectly clear that he admires the man, and that he’ll take the man’s word over his own intelligence networks. But now Trump is at the point where he’s parroting the man’s talking points in his own interviews. When Trump starts acting as a surrogate or representative of the Putin Regime…I mean seriously, where are we then? When does it stop being a joke that Putin is really leading the country?
The G20 summit happened over the weekend, the international economic convention between member nations, and if you asked Donald Trump, he was the shining master of amazing, all closing deals, kickin’ butt and taking names. In fact, for those that did ask Donald Trump, that’s basically exactly as he characterized it. What that mostly means for the rest of us, is that Trump didn’t royally screw anything up, avoided any major snafus (I mean, you still had fun little moments like him saying “Get me out of here!” to an aid over a hot mic, after shaking hands with the leader of Argentina), and was treated like the annoying kid that all the other kids humored so they wouldn’t get yelled at by their parents. That’s not to say Trump didn’t get anything done. He apparently got the new NAFTA deal signed, and pretended to reach ceasefire in our trade war with China, but make no mistake. These aren’t great victories, especially the landmark, remembered for all time kind of wins that Trump is claiming they are. They are steps toward backtracking some of the biggest mistakes Trump made out of the gate. And honestly, I would be far more impressed with his performance at the G20 if he would’ve been able to admit that his victories are only victories insofar as he was cleaning up problems that he made in the first place. Regardless, one thing is for certain, Donald Trump isn’t the admired cool kid of the world stage that he pretends to be, and we all know it.
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.
The San Diego Comic Convention has come and gone, and all the new movie and tv previews are hitting the internet. And I felt like when I was watching the previews for shows like the Walking Dead and Titans…that fiction was feeling less strange than reality. Honestly, if it turned out that there actually ARE Lizard People are running the government and that Donald Trump was one, or that Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan have been turning Congress into an undead, zombie horde, echo chamber of yes men, that would be less surprising than ANYTHING I saw in the Aquaman trailer. If 5 years ago, I pitched the actual events of the Trump presidency to AMC as their new Breaking Bad, I’d be a wealthy man right now.
Oh Donald. Donald, Donald, Donald! It is truly a bold move to come out and suggest that the Russians would be meddling in our midterms, but they would be interfering on behalf of the Democrats. I mean, honestly, it’s hilariously stupid, and I have to imagine that even your base will have to do some pretty impressive mental gymnastics to follow you on that logic, but I know they’ll get there. They manage to follow you no matter where you go. But this one has the sort of Donald Trump flair that we’ve come to know and hate. It’s truly a “You” move. Suggesting that Russia for some reason wants you and yours out of the picture is delightfully stupid. Putin has said, very vocally, only days ago, how happy he is to have you doing what you’re doing. You say you’re the toughest President on Russia, but the reality is you watch the government around you be tough on Russia, and complain that they’re destroying your budding relationship with a monster. But keep trying to make your sell. I mean, it’s actually even kind of devious on your part. If, by some magical miracle, the Dems have their blue wave, and knock it out of the park during midterms, you’ve started early in building your conspiracy!
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.
Right out of the gate at the NATO summit, Trump was working hard to get on everyone’s bad side. If he’s made it his mission to alienate the US from it’s allies, then he is nailing it, and nailing with style. It’s like he’s not off Air Force One 10 minutes and he’s heckling Angela Merkel with accusations that should have made her laugh in his face. Trump essentially accused Germany of being in Russia’s pocket, being under their control, being maneuvered like a puppet and…How could he say any of that with a straight face? Besides bending over backwards to constantly defend Vladimir Putin, his open admiration has caused him to act worryingly sycophantic. Hell, just days ago, he said he was more excited to hang with Putin than those grumps at NATO. So for Trump to suggest that anyone is Putin’s puppet…well I feel like I throw the term “pot calling the kettle black” around a lot these days.
So on Tuesday morning, Trump called Putin and congratulated him on his election victory. He did this despite his national security advisors apparently putting in big bold letters in a briefing “DO NOT CONGRATULATE!” Some are arguing that Trump simply didn’t read the briefing, which kind of tracks, seeing as I’m not entirely certain Trump knows how to read, or at the very least, he clearly doesn’t enjoy it. But the more believable and more likely scenario is Trump did it because he was explicitly told not to. He’s shown on more than one occasion that he will not be dictated to or told how to handle things. I wonder why more of the people surrounding him don’t use that to manipulate his behavior?
Mind the Exit 