Once again, Donald Trump is envious of Vladimir Putin’s government-controlled media in Russia. Just what an American president sworn to uphold the U.S. Constitution should do to defend the American people’s freedom of speech and the press.
Tag: Vladimir Putin
‘None of your business!’ Trump lashes out when reporter asks him about meeting with Putin
While leaving for his trip to Japan on Wednesday, President Donald Trump stopped to speak with the press on the South Lawn of the White House, where one reporter asked a question that clearly struck a nerve.
Sarah Westwood, a reporter for CNN, asked Trump whether he planned on telling Russian President Vladimir Putin at their upcoming meeting not to interfere in the 2016 election.
While leaving for his trip to Japan on Wednesday, President Donald Trump stopped to speak with the press on the South Lawn of the White House, where one reporter asked a question that clearly struck a nerve.
Sarah Westwood, a reporter for CNN, asked Trump whether he planned on telling Russian President Vladimir Putin at their upcoming meeting not to interfere in the 2016 election.
View the complete June 26 article by Cody Fenwick on the AlterNet website here.
Trump jets to Japan to wing it at G-20 summit as Iran tensions build
Official unable to lay out agenda for high-stakes meetings with Xi, Putin and MBS
After a week of brinksmanship and backing down, President Donald Trump heads to a G-20 summit in Japan on Wednesday for talks with other world leaders amid a volatile confrontation with Iran and stalled trade talks with China.
Senior administration officials made clear this week that Trump, who admits his negotiating style is based on gut feelings and big bets, will largely wing it at the meeting. Officials declined to describe any set agenda for the president’s talks with world leaders, including Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putinand South Korean President Moon Jae-in.
The Xi and Moon meetings will focus on trade and North Korea’s nuclear arms program. But on both matters, a senior administration official contended, “I don’t think the president is feeling any pressure on either of those accounts.”
View the complete June 25 article by John T. Bennett on The Roll Call website here.
Former US ambassador to Russia dissects Trump’s affection for dictators: ‘Things that the president says serves Russia’s national interest’
Remember when President Trump admitted that Russia had meddled in the 2016 presidential election?
That was less than two weeks ago, but our news cycle moves at such a brisk clip it’s easy to forget. There is no denying that on May 30, the same president who has repeatedly denied or downplayed Russia’s interference in American elections tweeted that “I had nothing to do with Russia helping me to get elected.” While Trump apparently thought he was defending himself with that remark — and later retracted it once he realized how it came across — it sure sounded like Trump admitting that Russian meddling happened and conceding that he benefited from it, even if only through a Freudian slip.
Whether Trump likes it or not, his presidency is inextricably linked to his unusual relationship with the Russian government. To learn more about how the Trump-Russia relationship has changed history, Salon reached out to Michael McFaul, a foreign policy adviser to President Barack Obama who served as U.S. ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014. McFaul was also briefly in the news after the Helsinki summit last year. When Russian President Vladimir Putin asked Trump to hand over McFaul for questioning on a variety of trumped-up charges, the president reportedly considered doing so. If Trump had the kind of unchecked power he wishes he did, McFaul’s life might have been in danger.
View the complete June 9 article by Matthew Rozsa from Salon on the AlterNet website here.
Putin out-prepared Trump in key meeting, Rex Tillerson told House panel
Former secretary of state Rex Tillerson told members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee that Russian President Vladimir Putin out-prepared President Trump during a key meeting in Germany, putting the U.S. leader at a disadvantage during their first series of tête-à-têtes.
The U.S. side anticipated a shorter meeting for exchanging courtesies, but it ballooned into a globe-spanning two-hour-plus session involving deliberations on a variety of geopolitical issues, said committee aides, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss Tillerson’s seven-hour closed meeting with the committee.
“We spent a lot of time in the conversation talking about how Putin seized every opportunity to push what he wanted,” a committee aide said. “There was a discrepancy in preparation, and it created an unequal footing.”
View the complete May 22 article by John Hudson and Josh Dawsey on The Washington Post website here.
Trump, Putin discuss Mueller probe in first conversation since report’s release
President Trump on Friday spoke by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin in their first known conversation since the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.
In a pair of tweets, Trump called the discussion “very productive” and said a variety of issues came up, including what the president called “the Russian Hoax.”
“Had a long and very good conversation with President Putin of Russia. As I have always said, long before the Witch Hunt started, getting along with Russia, China, and everyone is a good thing, not a bad thing,” Trump wrote roughly an hour after the call was first announced.
View the complete May 3 article by Jordan Fabian on The Hill website here.
Bolton accuses CNN host of lying about a call between Trump and Putin so he can pick a fight about Russia — then gets hit with the transcript
In a contentious exchange on CNN Wednesday, National Security Advisor John Bolton claimed CNN’s John Berman was “missing the point” of an interview he gave earlier on Fox News where he appeared to say there’s a scheduled phone call between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin.
The back-and-forth began when Berman asked what Trump has “said to Vladimir Putin on this subject” of Venezuela. Tuesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro was prepared to flee the country until the Kremlin advised him not it. The U.S. has pledged to support an uprising against the Maduro regime.
“We’ve made it clear to the Russians in a lot of conversations and a lot of different levels, some of which are going to continue today, why we think this behavior is unacceptable to us,” Bolton replied.
View the complete May 1 article by Elizabeth Preza on the AlterNet website here.
Prodded by Putin, Russians Sought Back Channels to Trump Through the Business World
WASHINGTON — At 9:34 on the November morning after Donald J. Trump was elected president in 2016, Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund and an informal envoy for President Vladimir V. Putin, sent a text message to a Lebanese-American friend with ties to the Trump campaign.
Mr. Dmitriev wanted to connect quickly with someone in Mr. Trump’s inner circle, preferably Donald Trump Jr. or Jared Kushner. By the end of the month, he was in touch with Rick Gerson, a friend of Mr. Kushner’s who manages a New York hedge fund.
The two discussed a potential joint investment venture. But the special counsel’s report released Thursday suggested that Mr. Dmitriev’s real interest lay elsewhere: He had been instructed by Mr. Putin, he told Mr. Gerson, to come up with a plan for “reconciliation” between the United States and Russia.
View the complete April 20 article by Sharon LaFraniere on The New York Times website here.
‘A matter of public record’: Yale history professor lists 50 reasons Trump is indebted to Putin — dating back to 1984
Timothy Snyder is the author of “The Road To Unfreedom”, of which The Guardian says — “Timothy Snyder is professor of history at Yale. His book Bloodlands, about the fallout of second world war atrocities on the eastern front, won the prestigious Hannah Arendt prize and was described by the late, great Tony Judt as “the most important book to appear on this subject in decades”. And yet as he unfolds this contemporary sequel, you might well hear, as I did from time to time, those sneery voices now lodged in your head that whisper of “liberal elitism” and “fake news” and “MSM” and “tempting conspiracies”, and which refuse ever, quite, to be quieted. How did we get here? Snyder has a good idea.”
Mr. Snyder on Twitter:
- “Why we do think that Mr. Trump owes a debt to Mr. Putin? Here are fifty reasons. All of the facts are a matter of public record, and all of the sources can be found in my book The Road to Unfreedom. #RoadToUnfreedom
- 1/50 In 1984, Russian gangsters began to launder money by buying and selling apartment units in Trump Tower (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 220).
Most Americans believe Russia has ‘kompromat’ on Trump
Trust in the administration is quite low.
A new Politico/Morning Consult poll finds that 52 percent of voters believe Russia has compromising information on President Donald Trump. The finding comes as his administration insists at every turn that Attorney General William Barr’s letter about the Mueller report exonerates Trump, even though it says the exact opposite.
According to the poll, 30 percent believe it’s very likely that Russia has compromising information, with another 22 percent adding that it’s somewhat likely and 14 percent saying they don’t know. Even among those who identified as Republicans, some 22 percent believed it’s likely. Only 35 percent of all voters believed to some degree that it’s not likely.
The poll also found that a 47 percent plurality of voters believe Trump “tried to impede or obstruct the investigation into whether his campaign had ties to Russia.” A 49 percent plurality also said they’re most likely to accept Robert Mueller’s Version of the investigation, with only 27 percent saying they’d trust Trump’s. Most voters believe the full Mueller report should be made public (82 percent).
View the complete March 27 article by Zack Ford on the ThinkProgress website here.