The Trump/Putin Summit: What the Media Isn’t Reporting

The reaction to Trump’s summit meeting and press conference with Putin was predictable and of course ridiculous. It is obvious (again) that the media is an echo chamber of group think. They have been shouting the same mantra about how Trump’s performance was dismal, he sold out America, he’s Putin’s puppet etc etc. (from the same people who accuse Trump of being a bully). The level of anger is not surprising either. The only thing missing was Tears for Fears singing “Shout” in the background while the media tried to one-up each other on insults toward Trump (I think the comparison to Pearl Harbor is the winner!.

So I have a question: is this genuine anger or is the media purposefully not reporting the meeting in it’s proper context because they don’t want you to know about certain things that were said. Because I read the transcript of the meeting and it is incredible what they (and the chattering political class of BOTH parties) are ignoring. You can read the transcript here. I preferred that to the video simply because I got annoyed trying to listen to the Russian translator. You couldn’t really hear what he was saying and he was talking over Putin. This was a historic meeting but you’d never know it from the prophets of doom in the MSM.

I don’t always agree with Anne Coulter (she can kind of hyper-active herself), but what she said about the media’s reaction is correct: ”I would urge elected Republicans, if you have absolutely no sense of history or geopolitics which apparently very few of them do, just keep your mouth shut. The last time you went crazy over Trump and joined in this mob mentality was in fact over the Muslim ban.”

Here are what I consider important takeaways from the speech that the media doesn’t seem to be covering:

Putin: “The Cold War is a thing of past.”

Trump: “I’m here today to continue the proud tradition of bold American diplomacy. From the earliest days of our republic, American leaders have understood that diplomacy and engagement is preferable to conflict and hostility.

No doubt this frosted John McCain and Lindsey Graham and their fellow neo-cons who just love conflict and reasons to invade other countries.

Putin: “We’re glad that the Korean Peninsula issue is starting to resolve. To a great extent it was possible thanks to the personal engagement of President Trump, who opted for dialogue instead of confrontation.”

I’m sure this had the left in a tizzy. Praise for Trump is not allowed even if he is doing exactly what they have been calling for ad-nauseum for my entire adult life – dialogue!

“We had a good conversation with President Trump and I hope that we start to understand each other better and I’m grateful to Donald for it. Clearly, there are some challenges left when we were not able to clear all the backlog but I think that we made a first important step in this direction.”

So apparently they are on a first name basis. I bet Putin never did that with Obama.

Trump: “Even during the tensions of the Cold War, when the world looked much different than it does today, the United States and Russia were able to maintain a strong dialogue. But our relationship has never been worse than it is now. However, that changed, as of about four hours ago. I really believe that. Nothing would be easier politically than to refuse to meet, to refuse to engage, but that would not accomplish anything.

As president, I cannot make decisions on foreign policy in a futile effort to appease partisan critics, or the media, or Democrats who want to do nothing but resist and obstruct.

This is exactly right and needed to be said – even to feckless members of his own party who wanted him to cancel the meeting.

Trump: “I would rather take a political risk in pursuit of peace than to risk peace in pursuit of politics. As president, I will always put what is best for America and what is best for the American people.”

This is the best line of the meeting. And while the punditry class was setting their hair on fire and shouting ‘Woe is us”, average American citizens were cheering and wondering when the rest of the Republican party will stop being sissies and grow some backbone!

Trump: “The president and I also discussed the scourge of radical Islamic terrorism. Both Russia and the United States have suffered horrific terrorist attacks and we have agreed to maintain open communication between our security agencies to protect our citizens from this global menace. Last year, we told Russia about a planned attack in St. Petersburg and they were able to stop it cold. They found them. They stopped them. There was no doubt about it. I appreciated President Putin’s phone call afterwards to thank me.”

This is one area that both countries have a shared interest in. And the cooperation between the two countries to stop a terrorist attack was unknown to me.

Trump (answering a question on whether he holds Russia accountable for anything):”Yes I do. I hold both countries responsible. I think that the United States has been foolish. I think we’ve all been foolish. We should have had this dialogue a long time ago, a long time frankly before I got to office. And I think we’re all to blame. But I do feel that we have both made some mistakes. I think that the probe is a disaster for our country. I think it’s kept us apart, it’s kept us separated. There was no collusion at all. Everybody knows it. People are being brought out to the fore. So far that I know virtually none of it related to the campaign. And they’re gonna have to try really hard to find somebody that did relate to the campaign.”

This is the quote that many in the media are crying was selling out America. You judge for yourself. Of course this was the same media who LOVED it when Obama spent 8 years running down the country for real.

Trump (on collusion and the 2016 election):”That was a clean campaign. I beat Hillary Clinton easily and frankly we beat her. And it’s a shame that there can even be a little bit of a cloud over it. People know that. People understand it. But, as you know, the whole concept of that came up perhaps a little bit before but it came out as a reason why the Democrats lost an election, which frankly, they should have been able to win because the electoral college is much more advantageous for Democrats, as you know, than it is to Republicans. We won the Electoral College by a lot. 306 to 223, I believe. We ran a brilliant campaign and that’s why I’m president.”

All of this is true and has the added benefit of sticking it to the media again. They deserve it. I think Trump is fed up with the attempt to delegitimize his election – and so are his voters. But this is par for the course for Democrats now. They did it with Bush in 2000 and 2004 (remember how Kerry really won because the exit polls showed him ahead?). They cannot accept the fact that their ideas have been rejected. I have news for them: it’s going to get worse! I think Rush was spot-on when he said the left’s insane reactions to Trump are driving people TO him.

Putin (on collusion): “As to who is to be believed and to who is not to be believed, you can trust no one – if you take this — where did you get this idea that President Trump trusts me or I trust him? He defends the interests of the United States of America. And I do defend the interests of the Russian Federation. We do have interests that are common. We are looking for points of contact. There are issues where our postures diverge and we are looking for ways to reconcile our differences, how to make our effort more meaningful. We should not proceed from the immediate political interests that guide certain political powers in our countries. We should be guided by facts. Could you name a single fact that would definitively prove the collusion? This is utter nonsense.”

All logical to normal, rational thinking individuals (which the liberal media is NOT).

Putin:”Now let’s get back to the issue of these 12 alleged intelligence officers of Russia. I don’t know the full extent of the situation, but President Trump mentioned this issue and I will look into it. We can actually permit official representatives of the United States, including the members of this very commission headed by Mr. Mueller, we can lead them into the country and they will be present at this questioning.”

Oh my, Putin just invited the Mueller team to come to Russia! But he wasn’t through. And what follows next is one of the most critical revelations of the meeting (which of course the press is ignoring):

Putin: “But in this case, there’s another condition. This kind of effort should be a mutual one. Then we would expect that the Americans would reciprocate and that they would question officials including the officers of law enforcement and intelligence services of the United States, whom we believe have something to do with illegal actions on the territory of Russia. And we have to request the presence of our law enforcement.

For instance, we can bring up Mr. Browder in this particular case. Business associates of Mr. Browder have earned over one and a half billion dollars in Russia. They never paid any taxes, neither in Russia nor in the United States and yet the money escaped the country, they were transferred to the United States. They sent a huge amount of money – 400 million – as a contribution to the campaign of Hillary Clinton. Well, that’s their personal case, it might have been legal, the contribution itself, but the way the money was earned was illegal.”

Gee and people wonder why Trump might be suspicious about our security apparatus. This is an absolute bombshell and indicates where the real collusion was.

REPORTER, AP: “President Trump, you first. Just now, President Putin denied having anything to do with the election interference in 2016. Every U.S. intelligence agency has concluded that Russia did. My first question for you sir is, who do you believe? My second question is would you now, with the whole world watching, tell President Putin, would you denounce what happened in 2016 and would you warn him to never do it again?”

Trump: “You have groups that are wondering why the FBI never took the server. Why haven’t they taken the server? Why was the FBI told to leave the office of the Democratic National Committee? I’ve been wondering that. I’ve been asking that for months and months and I’ve been tweeting it out and calling it out on social media. Where is the server? I want to know where is the server and what is the server saying? With that being said, all I can do is ask the question. Where are those servers? They’re missing. Where are they? What happened to Hillary Clinton’s emails? 33,000 emails gone, just gone. I think in Russia they wouldn’t be gone so easily.”

Gone, gone, gone they’ve been gone so long! I love how Trump turned this question back on the left and the Democrats. But I have to admit I think Trump missed an opportunity. He should have turned to Putin and done an perfect Obama impersonation, saying “I told Putin to cut it out”. That would have been priceless.

Putin (responding to a question on whether they had any compromising material on Trump) once he got through chuckling:

“Now, our distinguished colleague, let me tell you this.” (i.e. you clueless moron)

“When President Trump was at Moscow back then I didn’t even know that he was in Moscow. I treat President Trump with utmost respect. But back then, when he was a private individual, a businessman, nobody informed me that he was in Moscow. Well, let’s take St. Petersburg economic forum, for instance. There were over 500 American businessmen – high ranking, the high level ones, I don’t even remember the last names of each and every one of them. Do you think that we tried to collect compromising material on each and every single one of them? Well, it’s difficult to imagine an utter nonsense of a bigger scale than this.”

And as Gomer Pyle once said: “This here’s my favorite part”:

“Well, please just disregard these issues and don’t think about this anymore again.”

Hilarious!!

And thus concluded the Trump/Putin press conference where the media be-clowned themselves both during and after. I imagine Bill Kristol and George Will are needing straight-jackets about now. And somewhere Joe Scarborough is throwing ashes on his metropolitan haircut.