Starting a new beginning with the Russian Federation, 72-year-old President Donald Trump met in Helsinki today with 65-year-old President Vladimir Putin. With a backdrop of mutual suspicion, in part prompted by U.S. politics, both leaders shook hands, pledging a new era of cooperation where they could find common ground. If you listen to Democrats in Congress, Trump should have scrapped his long-awaited summit with Putin, all because of questionable domestic politics. Those same politics were dragged into the summit, with Trump asking Putin again about recent grand jury incictments of 12 members of Russia’s GRU military intelligence unit for allegedly hacking the Democratic National Committee and private email account of former Hillary Champaign Chairman John Podesta. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange released the hacked emails July 6, 2016.
Much of the U.S. press has been consumed with discrediting the Trump White House before November’s Midterm elections, hoping enough bad publicity would help Democrats retake Congress. Loaded with pointed questions about Russian hacking, the press pounced on Trump and Putin, firing questions related mostly related to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s indictments. Trump infuriated the press, reminding them, no matter what hacking occurred in the 2016 election, he won the election fair-and-square against former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Putin admitted openly he preferred Trump over Hillary because he wanted to repair eight years of damaged relations under former President Barack Obama. Trump asked the press what happened to Hillary’s 33,000 deleted emails and the Democratic National Committee servers that somehow went missing.
Putin offered to set up a joint task force with Trump, letting U.S. and Russian investigators to conduct a two-sided investigation of what happened in the 2016 election. Mueller’s indictments of Russian GRU military intelligence show only where the hacks of the DNC and Hillary campaign might have originated but not why the FBI, Department of Justice and National Security Agency was investigating Trump and his campaign associates, including former White House aides Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, former National Security Adviser Gen. Michael Flynn and Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions. While the media wants to focus only on Mueller’s recent indictment, they don’t want to acknowledge what Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod Rosenstein said that no American knowingly participated in Russian hacking activities. Trump and Putin emphatically denied any collusion in the 2016 campaign.
Democrats and the press focus only on what Putin or Trump did during the 2016 presidential campaign to win the election. To show how partisan the press has become pushing Democrat talking points, when former Deputy FBI Director Peter Strzok testified July 12 before the House Intel and Oversight committees, Democrats defended the FBI, DOJ and NSA actions, looking only to find ways to discredit Trump. Democrats’ conspicuous pro-FBI, DOJ and NSA bias shows the last thing they wanted to find out is corruption at government agencies. “Where are Hillary Clinton’s emails—33,000 emails gone, just gone?” asked Trump, calling Strzok, who headed Hillary’s email investigation, “a disgrace.” Strzok and former FBI Director James Comey exonerated Hillary July 5, 2016, two weeks before the Democratic National Convention. Trump thinks Hillary should have been charged with obstruction.
Trump’s not backing down from his attacks on the Special Counsel’s investigation he considers a baseless “witch hunt.” Trump and Putin rejected the idea that they had any relationship when Trump went to Moscow to host the Miss. Universe Pageant in 2013. Hillary’s opposition research AKA “the dossier” said Russia had the goods on Trump and could blackmail him at any time. Putin called the allegations preposterous. “I think we have great opportunities together as two countries that, frankly, have no been getting along very well for the last number of years,” Trump said, urging both sides to enter into a nesw era of cooperation. Mueller’s grand jury indictments offer nothing in terms of what happened in the 2016 election. Blaming Russia for influence peddling on social media or hacking a hacking campaign has no bearing on how Trump beat Hillary in 2016.
Trump sees Russian behavior in the 2016 election as water under the bridge, not denying that some element of Russian intelligence might have hacked the DNC and Hillary campaign officials. But the real problem for Democrats is not Russia but how Hillary and the DNC robbed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) from winning the nomination or how she got from interim DNC chairwoman Donna Brazille debate questions before the CNN debate. Hillary’s email problems preceded the 2016 election, only came under sharper scrutiny when she ran for president. “Our relationship with Russia has NEVER been worse thanks to the many years of U.S. foolishness and stupidity and now the Rigged Witch Hunt,” Trump tweeted, further antagonizing Democrats and the U.S. press. Working on common issues like Syria, global terrorism, Iran, China and North Korea all have higher priority than the 2016 election.
