The following article by Joe Conason was posted on the National Memo website July 16, 2018:
Donald Trump’s performance in Helsinki on Monday morning was certainly historic. On no other occasion since the founding of this country has an American president publicly demonstrated that he is a witting agent of a hostile foreign power — even as that country’s authoritarian ruler smirked beside him.
Standing at the podium with Vladimir Putin, Trump brazenly endorsed the Russian president’s denial of Kremlin interference in the 2016 presidential election. Only three days after his own appointees in the Justice Department announced charges against a dozen Russian agents, ratifying the long-held conclusions of US agencies, he told the assembled world media that he considered Putin’s word as good as the counsel of his own intelligence chiefs.
He did nothing but genuflect to Putin during their joint press conference, meekly saying that he credited the Russian’s “strong and powerful denial” of interfering in the US election and that he “didn’t see any reason why they would.” Of course he personifies that reason, having spent the past year doing Kremlin dirty work against NATO, the European Union, and American institutions. He even praised Putin’s absurd “offer” to let the Russians investigate their own crimes against the United States.
View the complete article on the National Memo website here.