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Pierce writes: "So we're just not going to mention the election hacking?"

Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. (photo: Getty Images)
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. (photo: Getty Images)

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The Alarm Bells Should Be Ringing

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

16 July 18


President Trump enters the Putin summit with no preparation and no mention of Russian meddling in 2016—or right now.

onald Trump, American president, insisted there be no note-takers in his one-on-one meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday. Trump resisted including witnesses because he reportedly fears leaks, but the result is that we will have no official record of what goes on. We will have to depend on the word of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. Under normal circumstances, we might fear that the Russians would try to misrepresent what happened. These days, we can extend that concern to everyone involved.

That's particularly true based on Trump's messaging in the lead-up to the rendezvous. Specifically, there's this:

Immediately, you got the impression this was something the Russians themselves would say. As luck would have it, they happen to agree!

Uh, what? Are we all so accustomed to spelunking down the rabbit hole that this barely registers? The reason Russian-American relations have been strained over the last few years is that Russia invaded and annexed Crimea, and backed rebels in Eastern Ukraine who shot down a commercial plane over European airspace, and supported genocidal dictator Bashar al-Assad—and killing civilians generally—in Syria. Oh, and they hacked and meddled in the 2016 American presidential election, which Trump just happened to win by a razor-thin margin in a few key states in the Electoral College.

This Trumpian theme that previous presidents' posture towards Russia was some sort of arbitrary choice, rather than a response to Russian aggression, has been a constant theme in the days and hours before the summit. Here is the president's opening statement on Monday:

So we're just not going to mention the election hacking, which many experts suggest will undoubtedly continue into the 2018 cycle—that is to say, it's happening right now? How about the twelve Russians who were just indicted for it on Friday? Trump now seems to acknowledge Russia interfered in 2016—if not what's happening now—but he won't challenge Putin on it. Is he afraid to?

Instead, Trump has also devoted himself to blaming President Obama, his predecessor, for the hacking.

This seems like a good time to note it was Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who blocked the Obama administration and a bipartisan group of congressional leaders from going public about Russian activity before Election Day. This is just one dimension of the insane power politics McConnell has practiced during his tenure as majority leader, which history, if we get that far, will not look kindly upon.

The president didn't just trash Obama and yell "witch hunt" in the lead-up, though. He also complained about the expectations placed on him:

(Note that Trump is about to meet with Putin, whose critics in journalism often end up dead, and that there was a mass shooting in an American newsroom just a couple of weeks ago. Naturally, the American president calls the American press the Enemy of the People all the same.)

Of course, all this is less about Trump getting Moscow than giving away Alaska.

The alarm bells should be ringing, particularly because this little event features, in the words of NBC's Andrea Mitchell, "a KGB spymaster ... and a president who spent the weekend golfing, and has not been preparing. There were no principal meetings, no planning for this summit, no deeply organized strategy sessions. What is the agenda, what are the goals? What do they want to get out of it?"

This level of hard work and preparation is not restricted to this event. Trump quite clearly lacks the discipline, knowledge, or attention span to perform many of the duties of his office. But in this scenario, you have to wonder whether he didn't need to worry about the agenda or the goals because they'd be given to him shortly after he shook hands with the Russian president.


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