R Is For Republican — And Russian

Vladimir Putin is brilliant. Without firing a single nuclear missile, without dispatching a team of assassins to murder American leaders, without even sending a nuclear submarine to lurk near our shores, he has managed to inflict significant damage on our country.

Putin must be smiling at his astonishing success. He interfered in the 2016 presidential election and helped into office a narcissistic sociopath who not only admires Putin but also does his bidding. President Donald J. Trump is a would-be despot who, for reasons we may never know, carries out Putin’s wishes — destroying democratic values, exacerbating civic division and, of course, trashing Ukraine.

But Putin’s victory did not end there. Because Trump has completely taken over the Republican Party, so has Putin. His GOP lackeys are going around repeating the discredited propaganda that Putin must have whispered into Trump’s ear: that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 presidential election.

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Trump’s Gift to Putin

The President’s Privatized Foreign Policy Is a Boon for Russia

For decades, if not centuries, scholars have debated which matters more in international affairs: structural forces, such as the relative power between states, or the ideas and decisions of individual leaders. But at least as far as the United States is concerned, President Donald Trump may put the debate to rest.

After a slow start, Trump has affected almost every facet of U.S. foreign policy. And the story to date is not an inspiring one. Trump has personalized, privatized, and deinstitutionalized foreign policy to the detriment of the national interest. That trend has accelerated in recent months, culminating in two disastrous missteps vis-à-vis Ukraine and Syria. In the process, the American public has suffered, U.S. allies have lost, and U.S. adversaries have gained—none more so than Russian President Vladimir Putin. Continue reading “Trump’s Gift to Putin”

Charges of Ukrainian Meddling? A Russian Operation, U.S. Intelligence Says

New York Times logoMoscow has run a yearslong operation to blame Ukraine for its own 2016 election interference. Republicans have used similar talking points to defend President Trump in impeachment proceedings.

WASHINGTON — Republicans have sought for weeks amid the impeachment inquiry to shift attention to President Trump’s demands that Ukraine investigate any 2016 election meddling, defending it as a legitimate concern while Democrats accuse Mr. Trump of pursuing fringe theories for his benefit.

The Republican defense of Mr. Trump became central to the impeachment proceedings when Fiona Hill, a respected Russia scholar and former senior White House official, added a harsh critique during testimony on Thursday. She told some of Mr. Trump’s fiercest defenders in Congress that they were repeating “a fictional narrative.” She said that it likely came from a disinformation campaign by Russian security services, which also propagated it.

In a briefing that closely aligned with Dr. Hill’s testimony, American intelligence officials informed senators and their aides in recent weeks that Russia had engaged in a yearslong campaign to essentially frame Ukraine as responsible for Moscow’s own hacking of the 2016 election, according to three American officials. The briefing came as Republicans stepped up their defenses of Mr. Trump in the Ukraine affair.

View the complete November 22 article by Julian E. Barnes and Matthew Rosenberg on The New York Times website here.

Trump Visit to Moscow for May 9 Would Be ‘Right Step’: Putin

  • Russian leader warns of risk of Libya-style chaos in Bolivia
  • Putin calls for pullback of all opposing forces in Ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putin said it would be a “right step” if U.S. counterpart Donald Trump accepts his invitation to attend the upcoming May 9 military parade in Red Square commemorating the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II.

“The presence of the leader of a country which made a major contribution to the fight against Nazism at a ceremony marking the end of World War II, even amid a pre-election campaign, would be a right step,” Putin told reporters in Brasilia on Thursday on the sidelines of a summit of BRICS leaders from Russia, India, China, Brazil and South Africa.

The Russian leader also warned that the overthrow of Bolivia’s socialist president, Evo Morales, and the chaos that it has sparked reminded him of events in Libya following the ouster of Muammar Qaddafi in 2011.

View the complete November 14 article by Henry Meyer and Stepan Kravchenko on the Bloomberg News website here.

Servile Trump Keeps Doing Favors For Putin

Under fire from both Democrats and Republicans in Congress, Donald Trump bitterly abandoned his plan to hold the next summit of the Group of Seven industrialized nations at one of his Florida resorts. But he has another idea for the meeting that he has not given up: inviting Vladimir Putin.

It’s one of those Trump ideas that address no obvious need and would yield no likely benefit. It’s also one that pits him against most of the other members of the G-7. At the August gathering in Biarritz, France, the president insisted on pressing the issue: “I think it would be better to have Russia inside the tent than outside the tent.”

Trump says Russia was ejected from what was then the G-8 because Putin “outsmarted” Barack Obama and Obama wanted retribution. As with so many matters on which Trump comments, it’s not clear whether that statement stems from ignorance or mendacity. In either case, it’s false.

View the complete October 27 article by Steve Chapman on the National Memo website here.

Trump created the bloody disaster in northern Syria. Biographer David Cay Johnston explains how we make sure he owns it

AlterNet logoVladimir Putin must be smiling – even laughing out loud — at the bungling Donald Trump’s crazy mess in Syria.

Putin is the clear winner in Trump’s blood-soaked disaster. By tweeting without telling the generals his signal for Turkey to invade Syria, Trump forced American troops to flee half-eaten meals so they could escape alive. His inept (to be kind) actions then required our Air Force to bomb America’s weapons storage base in Northern Syria.

This 100% Trumpian disaster in the Middle East is unfolding so fast it’s easy to get lost in details. So, let’s walk through the significance of Trump’s incompetent actions. They came about for a simple reason. An ignorant, mentally disturbed, play-acting president has no idea what he is doing.

View the complete October 20 article by David Cay Johnson from DC Report on the AlterNet website here.

Russia’s having a pretty good October, thanks in no small part to Donald Trump

Washington Post logoThere was an enormous amount of subtext to the conversation between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky when the two met in New York last month. Falling on the same day that Trump’s White House had released a rough transcript of a July 25 conversation between the two — a document that articulated Trump’s request for Zelensky to launch probes aiding Trump politically — lesser details of the conversation were pushed to the background.

As when Trump told Zelensky that he should finalize a peace agreement with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“I’ve heard you actually have, over the last fairly short period of time, you’ve really made some progress with Russia,” Trump said to Zelensky. “I hear a lot of progress has been made. And just keep it going. Be nice to end that whole disaster.”

View the complete October 7 article by Philip Bump on The Washington Post website here.

Trump Says He Hopes Zelensky and Putin Can Be BFFs

Trump Says He Hopes Zelensky and Putin Can Be BFFs

Questions about the nature of President Donald Trump’s relationship with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky have prompted the House of Representatives to launch an impeachment inquiry. But in his first in-person appearance with the leader he allegedly pressured to investigate his political rivals, Trump appeared more interested in matching Zelensky up with another unlikely ally: Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“I really hope that Russia—because I really believe that President Putin would like to do something—I really hope that you and President Putin can get together and solve your problem,” Trump said at the United Nations on Wednesday, as Zelensky sat stone-faced. “That would be a tremendous achievement, and I know that you’re trying to do that.

“You’ve really made some progress with Russia,” Trump added, telling Zelensky that “it’d be nice to end that whole disaster.”

View the complete September 25 article by Scott Bixby on the Daily Beast website here.

Trump’s ‘confiscation’ of interpreter’s notes from private Putin meeting set off alarm bells over spy’s safety: CNN’s Sciutto

AlterNet logoAppearing on CNN’s “New Day,” host Jim Sciutto — who broke the story that the CIA was forced to pull an highly-placed U.S. spy from Russia after Donald Trump reportedly exposed him — said American intelligence officials grew more concerned after Trump held a private meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Appearing with fellow host John Berman, Sciutto said he felt at liberty to discuss more details about the agent who is back in the U.S., now that the New York Times released information they had received.

According to the CNN reporter, not only were intel officials concerned about Trump exposing sensitive information in the Oval Office with Russian officials, but they grew concerned when he confiscated his interpreter’s transcripts from his Putin meeting.

View the complete September 10 article by Tom Boggioni from Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.

In Japan, Trump appears to make light of Russian election interference during meeting with Putin

Washington Post logoPresident Trump met with Russian President Vladi­mir Putin on the sidelines of a Group of 20 summit in Osaka, Japan, and appeared to make light of Moscow’s election interference. Here are the highlights:

  • “Don’t meddle in the election,” a grinning Trump told Putin in response to reporters’ questions.
  • Trump and Putin also appeared to briefly discuss their mutual dislike of the news media with Trump saying “Fake news is a great term, isn’t it.”
  • Russian state media said Trump “responded very positively” to an invitation from Putin to visit Moscow next year.
  • Other leaders at the summit, notably British Prime Minister Theresa May, took a tougher stand against Putin, citing Russia’s “destabilizing” behavior.

President Trump on Friday appeared to make light of Russian election interference, telling President Vladi­mir Putin with a grin during a bilateral meeting, “Don’t meddle in the election,” after reporters shouted questions about the topic.

View the complete June 28 article by David Nakamura, Seung Min Kim and Damian Paletta on The Washington Post website here.