posted July 10, 2017 09:43 AM            

Wrong! It turned out to be a real and productive bilateral, lasting instead some two hours and fifteen minutes. Trump had prepared and had an agenda.

Few predicted or expected this or the firm results that flowed, including a ceasefire in Syria (creating safe zones region by region was a Trump campaign promise – another promise kept), working groups on cyber threats, a robust discussion of meddling in our elections and other important issues. But then all of the over-exposed pundits, same old experts and the lame media always get Trump wrong and underestimate him and his abilities. They loathe him so much they can’t stand his constant winning.

The signs all over the city where the meeting took place, in the larger context of the G20 Summit, Hamburg, Germany, read: “Welcome to Hell.”

Outside, the radical anti-capitalist protesters, mostly from the German violent Left, battled with the police (over 150 have been injured).

Water cannons kept them at bay while the world leaders convened. Globalization was their stated enemy when it should have been globalism. Who funds all these wackos anyway; as they always show up again and again, accomplish nothing, except attempted disruption and continual news coverage, as if they were the story?

There were four myths that the media had projected around this first meeting between the Presidents, Trump and Putin, each of which needs to be defused and put to rest. They are all liberal gibberish:

# 1 Myth is that the US and Russia are equals. The facts portray the true reality. The US economy is 20x times larger than that of Russias; and Russia is in decline as a still emerging economy, entirely dependent on the (low and getting lower) price of oil & gas. The US military spends $600 billion a year and the Russians spend only $67 billion. They are no match on the land, in the air, or at sea, except for one category: nuclear weapons. When it comes to cultural influence there simply is NO comparison.

# 2 Myth is that the Americans hate Russians and vice versa. This is simply not true. We have in the past been allies, foes, and frememies and the fact that Russia deals in destabilizing measures is nothing new. As if America doesn’t? This meeting disappointed the CNN crowd, as it was not the movie, Rocky IV, where Rocky Balboa took a wicked beating from Captain Ivan Drago until the last round. Russia and America it appears, surprise, surprise, can get along, can work together, can relate and even agree. Someone needs to tell all the costly and duplicative committees in the US Congress investigating—who knows what?

# 3 Myth international relations is not, regardless what the G20 or the UN, or god forbid, the EU says—all about cooperation and a collaboration of multipolar weak powers to achieve next to nothing. In fact, Thucydides got it right centuries BC, when he stated: “The strong do what they can do and the weak suffer what they must.” Life may no longer be quite the Hobbesian: short, nasty and brutish but it takes realpolitik and real leadership to get things done—in war and peace. Trump and Putin seem to get that where other so-called ‘world leaders’ and the weak institutions they create — don’t.

# 4 Myth is simply that culture matters. Trump and Team America have read Russian culture. In the classic, Icon & The Axe, former Librarian of Congress, James Billington, argued that you can’t understand Russia without knowing its history, literature, and culture, which is rooted in long suffering and the strong division between Europe and Asia. The Russian psyche is one of near constant lament and doom. Trump read this and allowed Putin a way to save face, be on a grand stage and solve world problems (many of which were indeed caused by Russia itself). He respected, perhaps, used Putin—who we were warned beforehand was the dangerous, all too clever spymaster and brilliant chess player — to his own aims. In the end, it was Putin who got played.

Can we finally get on now with treating Russia as a valuable nation state who has interests, some of which correspond with our own, some not, and start to deal with them as a player?

Putin and Trump don’t have to be best buds and a bromance was never really in the cards — only in the minds of the sorry, losing party and its media pawns. But as Henry Kissinger reminded us just weeks ago, “Donald Trump is right about Russia… I hope that an effort will be made for a serious dialogue which tries to avoid the drift towards confrontation.”

You see, Russia remains and always will be a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, as Churchill famously called it in 1939. But as he shrewdly went on to say, “Perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.”

Trump has put America first but also realized that Russia needs to have air to breathe and scope to maneuver. It has a role in the game even if it is not quite yet welcomed into the Western civilized ‘community of nations’. That doesn’t mean we don’t call them out as he clearly did in Poland, or undercut them when it comes to providing alternative energy options to eastern and central Europe. It only means they can be useful when and where our interests intersect. No more, no less. And like the greatest diplomat to deal with the then Russian (Soviet) nemesis, Ronald Reagan insisted: ‘trust but verify’.

posted July 10, 2017 07:14 PM            

... the plot thickens

posted July 10, 2017 08:05 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by juniperb:
oopsie, then sonny boy `fess`s up to meeting with a Russian lawyer to get dirt on HRC.

... the plot thickens

---

posted July 10, 2017 08:09 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by juniperb:
oopsie, then sonny boy `fess`s up to meeting with a Russian lawyer to get dirt on HRC.

... the plot thickens

---

The White House is sweating like Steve Bannon at a Golden Corral. This will be a very interesting week.

posted July 10, 2017 08:27 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by Node:
The White House is sweating like Steve Bannon at a Golden Corral. This will be a very interesting week.

Not to mention the Kellyanne Conway meltdown interview that went off the rails so bad the WH was in a froth to get her off the air.

---

Which interview?

posted July 10, 2017 08:31 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by teasel:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by juniperb:
[b]oopsie, then sonny boy `fess`s up to meeting with a Russian lawyer to get dirt on HRC.

... the plot thickens

---

Not mumbling, Randall. And pubbies would have freaked, if Chelsea had been told to do the same, in place of either of her parents. [/B][/QUOTE]

posted July 10, 2017 08:39 PM            

Good for Kellyanne.

Your empty headed little leftist icons are embarrassing...to America.

It's amazing people yipping and yapping, howling and screeching don't know there are protocols in place for when a national leader has to leave a conference. A person designated to do so sits in for them.

posted July 10, 2017 10:54 PM            

If someone tried to, or successfully, hacked this site, would you make them a moderator, and trust them with its safety?

posted July 11, 2017 08:37 AM            

Leftists, wandering around in a Loco Weed haze, interpret President Trump's sharp, forceful questioning of Putin as...giving America away!

Is there any intelligent life on the left?

Trump’s Approach Toward Putin Leaves Tillerson ‘Stunned’
This makes a lot of sense.
Andrew Kerr
July 10, 2017

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told an associate he was “stunned” by President Donald Trump’s brash method of approaching the subject of Kremlin election interference with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday, according to The New York Times.

“I’m going to get this out of the way: Did you do this?” Trump reportedly asked the Russian president unceremoniously at the beginning of their meeting at the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany.

Tillerson had urged Trump to hit Putin hard on the issue of election interference during their in-person meeting, but even he was taken aback by Trump’s blunt approach.

Tillerson was the only high-level Trump administration official in the room with the president during his in-person meeting with Putin, which lasted more than two hours.

“They had a very robust and lengthy exchange on the subject” of Russian interference, Tillerson told reporters after the meeting. “What the two presidents, I think, rightly focused on is, how do we move forward? Because it’s not clear to me that we will ever come to some agreed-upon resolution of that question between the two nations.”

Tillerson’s counterpart, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, said Trump accepted Putin’s assurances that Russia did not interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

“Trump said he’d heard President Putin’s clear statements that that wasn’t true and that the Russian government didn’t interfere in these elections, and that he accepts these statements,” Lavrov said.

Trump “said that he accepts these assertions — that’s it,” Lavrov said.

But a senior White House official briefed on the conversation told The Times that Trump hit Putin on the issue for about 40 minutes in an exchange that became heated at times.

Putin at one point loudly demanded definitive proof from Trump that Russia subverted the U.S. election, according to the official.

A State Department official told Bloomberg on condition of anonymity that the Trump administration disputes Lavrov’s account of the meeting.

The official noted that Tillerson said the U.S. and Russia would continue discussions about alleged election interference.