One thing that came through in many of the House Intelligence Committee’s interviews with Ukraine experts was the symbolic importance to President Zelensky of having an Oval Office meeting with Donald Trump. It was widely understood that he would be strengthened both at home and in his upcoming negotiations with Vladimir Putin. The meeting with Putin occurred in Paris on Monday. Zelensky entered the summit without the benefit of an Oval Office meeting.
Not only that, Zelensky lacked anything resembling unified American support. The whole world now knows that President Trump does not like Ukraine and accuses them of trying to “take him down” in 2016. They know he sees the country as irredeemably corrupt and uniformly unsupportive of his political future. They know that Trump put Ukrainian military aid on hold and only released it reluctantly when he realized that he was about to face down a scandal that could (and will) cause his impeachment.
Meanwhile, some in the Republican Party have now embraced a debunked theory that Ukraine, rather than Russia, was responsible for interfering in the 2016 election. They adopted this theory because it’s the only way to defend Trump’s demand that Ukraine blame themselves for the hacking of the Democrats if they wanted to receive a formal visit in the White House. For those who can’t quite embrace this level of craziness, they simply argue that Ukraine was almost as guilty of Russia because some of them objected publicly to Candidate Trump’s opinion that Crimea rightfully belongs to Russia.
So, far from entering his peace negotiations with Putin from a position of strength, Zelensky was lacking support from his most important ally. And if that wasn’t clear on Monday, it certainly became clear on Tuesday when the Russians were granted what Zelensky could not secure for himself.
Donald Trump held a closed-door meeting with the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, at the White House on Tuesday, but the two men gave diverging accounts of what was discussed, on a day articles of impeachment were announced against the US president.
The last time Lavrov visited the White House, in May 2017, Trump was reported to have disclosed highly classified information to him about US intelligence-sharing arrangements.
On this occasion, the press were barred from the meeting, and were handed a White House statement saying, that among other topics: “President Trump warned against any Russian attempts to interfere in United States elections.”
Asked about the statement at a press conference in the Russian embassy later the same afternoon, Lavrov claimed: “No we haven’t even actually discussed elections.”
So, on the very day that the House of Representatives introduced two articles of impeachment related to Trump’s Ukraine policy, President Trump was huddling in the Oval Office privately with the foreign minister of Russia.
Simple optics should preclude such a move by our president, but he obviously feels immune from congressional pressure and absolutely unable to resist directives from the Kremlin.
It’s happening right out on the open. Every single opportunity he has to strengthen Putin, he takes it. The whole Ukraine episode started as Trump doing Putin’s bidding about military aid. He’s a traitor, surrounded by traitors.
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Yes sir. I agree and it bothers me no end. This fuck is a traitor, Obsequious bastard.
Note also that after Der Trumper claims to have supposedly “warned” Lavrov about Russian election interference at today’s meeting, Lavrov feels perfectly free to trot out and deny that elections were discussed at all.
What would a non-Quisling prez do in the face of such behavior by an (officially adversarial) power?
It’s so true and it boggles my mind. Hard to believe what Trump gets away with in bright daylight and the extent to which the Republicans go along with it.
“obviously feels immune from Congressional pressure..”
And just as important, Der Trumper feels immune from electoral pressure, as a result of the failed Constitution, which allows a (now) deeply deranged and delusional minority faction rural/exurban electorate consuming Goebbelsian Big Lies on an hourly basis to override the will of the people. This anti-democratic electoral strategy is now the backbone of the “conservative” movement.
Yes, and I don’t think we’ve thought enough about it and about how to attack it. What does/would a campaign to weaken and defeat not just Trump, but the Putin-led authoritarian alliance that has so much leverage over Trump and the Republican party?
Who would have thought we’d ever see the day when we have a president openly siding with a hostile foreign power against the interests of the US. Even worse, that his loyalties to a foreign leader are apparent and clearly take precedence over that of his own country. Worst of all, that as long as this president’s party is willing to ignore the evidence and the law, there isn’t anything that can be done to put a stop to it and secure the national interest, since all remedies called for in the Constitution are political.
That said, I don’t believe for one moment that, were this a democratic president being propped up by a similarly recalcitrant democratic party, that the situation would not be brought to an end.
And if Trump is reelected, through cheating, no doubt, then clearly, when the president is a republican, he or she IS above the law.
What shocks me most is that all this can be happening out in the open and Trump remains at 40+% in the polls. I knew Americans are incredibly ignorant but it’s hard to wrap my head around this level of stupidity. But then in a world where genocide is a norm (name me a country that has not participated at some point in time), I guess nothing should surprise us. People can be greedy, inhumane and incredibly self serving in the most narrow of ways. At the same time, they wonder why they’re so unhappy. One pays a price for living in ignorance of one’s conscience. It’s sad that so few people understand that.
After 4 decades of consuming “conservative” sewage, The 46% see themselves as oppressed victims, thus their unhappiness. So they turn to sadistic spite as their emotion of choice.
That they can happily endure one of Der Trumper’s 60 minute rally-rants demonstrates both the sadism and the delusion. They’ll accept anything not to lose that satisfying spite. Loss of rational reality is a small price to pay to feed their addiction. And most will not alter their mindset even after national Gotterdammerung.
What concerns me even more than the intransigence of the subset of that 40+% Trump supporters who are mired in mindless, cult like subservience to him, is the majority of Americans who don’t even bother to vote, let alone pay attention to events. How can we expect people like this to even take the time to understand what’s going on in the hearings, and then even care about them, when they can’t even be bothered to vote?
Where was the outrage over the hypocrisy of Melania Trump rearing up in high dudgeon claiming that the mere utterance of Barron Trump’s name is using him for political purpose, while the husband of “be best” is taking kids away from their parents never to be seen again, putting others in cages and leaving still others to die in captivity, and all for political purposes?
Trump is a symptom of a lot more than the rot in the GOP. Truth be told, he’s a symptom of the apathy and rot in values of the American people. We’re gonna need more than just a presidential nominee;
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