A Cordial but Reserved First Date - Trump/Putin

‘Neither of them wanted to stop’: Trump and Putin enjoy successful ‘first date’ | The Guardian |

“I think there was just such a level of engagement and exchange, and neither one of them wanted to stop,” US secretary of State Rex Tillerson said afterwards. “Several times I had to remind the president, and people were sticking their heads in the door. And they sent in the first lady at one point to see if she could get us out of there, and that didn’t work either.”

here were sighs of relief in Washington that Trump, an erratic and volatile president with little foreign policy experience, had avoided a major gaffe. The news website Axios summed it up:

○ “Trump survives the Putin meeting”

Failure to address what has been described as the political crime of the century would have fuelled criticism and dominated the news agenda, overshadowing other matters such as a ceasefire deal in south-west Syria. Sean Guillory, a blogger and podcaster on Russia, said: “The whole thing is theatre for domestic consumption.”

Alina Polyakova, director of Europe and Eurasia research at the Atlantic Council, a Washington thinktank, agreed that raising the issue of election meddling was merely “pro forma”. She said: “There was political awareness that they had to bring it up. Not doing so would have been politically deaf and suspicious in a way.”

More significant was the body language between the leaders that, in Polyakova’s view, offered a “night and day” contrast with Barack Obama’s frosty meetings with the Russian president.

○ Washington’s role in undermining Russia’s 1996 election –

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The secret story of how four U.S. advisers used polls, focus groups, negative ads and all the other techniques of American campaigning to help Boris Yeltsin win.

Putin’s revenge for U.S. meddling in the elction of 1996 which brought Boris Yeltsin a second term in the Kremlin.

Rescuing Boris | TIME – 2001 |

The Americans were brought in by a circuitous route. Felix Braynin of San Francisco, a Soviet immigrant who is now a wealthy consultant to American businesses working in Russia, began helping the Yeltsin campaign last year.

After he asked about American advisors who could help, San Francisco lawyer Fred Lowell suggested Gorton and Joe Shumate, an expert on political polling, and Richard Dresner, a political strategist who has helped not only Wilson but President Clinton in his earlier campaigns for governor of Arkansas.

The Americans will not say how much they were paid, although their fee has been estimated at about $250,000. They were told that their involvement had to be treated like a state secret because of fears that the Communists would use their presence to try to foment anti-Western sentiment among voters.

The group worked in hiding on the 11th floor of the Kremlin’s lavish President Hotel in downtown Moscow. The hotel can be entered by invitation only. After six weeks inside, Gorton and his colleagues began to sneak out for occasional meals in the city or to go into the countryside to help conduct some of Russia’s first focus groups.

“What you have to understand is that this hotel is a minimum-security prison masquerading as a five-star hotel,” said Steven Moore, a 28-year-old political consultant who joined in the effort.

The team is still secretive about some of its Russian business. Dresner prefers to stay mum about whether he was in touch with his old colleague Dick Morris, now Clinton’s chief campaign advisor. Citing certain “agreements” that they refuse to explain, Dresner and Gorton acknowledge only that information about their work was made available to the Clinton White House.