To keep our friends close and our enemies closer

Roger L. Simon writes in PJ Media,

...Virtually every member of the smart set from Pelosi to McCain to some ninety-five percent of the media, including several cowards on Fox News, to, alas, Lindsey Graham (who should know better) are going out of their minds excoriating Trump for being soft on Putin, even for being "owned" by the neo-Soviet strongman. John Brennan -- once a communist himself, so he should know -- accused Trump of treason.

Okay, time for that familiar cliche -- the thought experiment. Suppose Trump had done the opposite, exactly what these people demanded -- verbally and viciously assaulted Putin for all his totalitarian tropes from annexing the Crimea to humiliating John Podesta for being so dumb as to fall for a phishing attack (all right -- I'll be fair. For invading the computers of Democratic Party operatives, allegedly to elect Trump) and so forth?

What would that have accomplished? The obvious answer is zilch. Again the opposite would most likely have occurred. Things, already bad, would have been set back further. It's human nature. You don't have to be a personal acquaintance of Vladimir Putin to know that. You only have to be breathing.

...Although Russia -- the largest nation on the planet -- is in many ways a failing state with an economy barely the size of Texas, it still has a huge percentage of the world's nuclear weapons, about equal with ours, and the capacity to deliver them (and to pass them along to unreliable non-state actors). It behooves us to have a relationship with them for our survival and everybody else's, to keep our friends close and our enemies closer, as the Godfather would put it. The obvious goal in this is to limit nuclear proliferation and even to reduce, or at least stabilize, the nuclear arsenals as agreements come up for renewal.

...His strategy should be clear by now to all those except those (unfortunately many) who deliberately don't want to understand it. I wrote about it earlier in "Trump's New Foreign Policy: The Cooptation Doctrine."

He is, as Greg Gutfeld noted on The Five, his own good cop and bad cop all rolled into one. The good cop part is what we saw with Kim Jong-un and now with Putin -- complimenting tyrants to an almost uncomfortable degree. It's oddly a Christian love-the-sinner-but-hate-the-sin kind of thing.

The bad cop part is what Trump actually does concretely -- and, as Putin certainly knows, this is far more important than photo ops and press conferences with all the attendant words. Trump's actions vis-a-vis Russia have been considerably more stringent than his predecessor's -- opening the energy spigots, increasing sanctions, arming the Ukrainians, ejecting 60 Russian agents, etc.

Barack Obama -- although the New York Times would burn down its own building rather than admit it -- did an abysmal job with Putin and was indeed the one who was truly "owned" by the Russian. And it wasn't just the silly reset button and the embarrassing video of Barack whispering into Medvedev's ear to tell Vlad he -- Barack -- would be more flexible on missiles after the election. (What a toady!) Even worse, in his Chamberlainesque ardor to make a deal with Iran's mullahs, Obama let Putin play him in Syria, agreeing not to honor his redline against Assad's use of chemical weapons in order not to endanger the deal. Trump never did anything nearly that pathetic. Actually, he stands up strong.

But the David Gergens of the world yammer on that Trump is doing everything wrong. He's certainly doing some things wrong -- we all do -- but being gracious to Putin personally while actively opposing what the Russian does in his actions, may be exactly the way to get results. But Trump's opponents don't care about results. Overwhelmed with hate, they would prefer to see the president wounded and impeached than succeed with Putin and bring about a world safer from nuclear armageddon. If Trump achieves this, however, it will be his finest hour. It would be for any president.

Read more here.

“false, malicious and absurd.”

Kristina Wong reports at Breitbart,

Several mainstream news media outlets reported Tuesday evening that President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin held a second, undisclosed “meeting” at the G-20 summit earlier this month in Hamburg, Germany, attended only by Putin’s translator.

The “meeting” — occurring during a dinner for heads of states and their spouses, supposedly “raised the eyebrows” of other foreign leaders at the dinner, for breaking national security protocol by not also having a U.S. translator present, according to Eurasia Group President Ian Bremmer, who first reported the meeting in a note sent to clients, according to Reuters.

However, the White House quickly sent out a lengthy statement explaining what actually occurred, and calling the idea there was a second meeting “false, malicious and absurd.”

Here’s the White House’s statement in full:

The night of the G20 summit, there was, first, a concert for all the leaders in the new Hamburg opera house. The leaders were all photographed by the press in a group photo before going in. Later that night, Chancellor Merkel hosted a dinner for leaders and spouses only, and the German government set the seating arrangements. The concert and dinner were publicly announced on both the President’s schedule and the G20 schedule, with the clear understanding that all visiting leaders would be present.

At the dinner, President Trump was seated between Mrs. Abe, wife of the Prime Minister of Japan, and Mrs. Macri, wife of the President of Argentina. Mrs. Trump was seated next to President Putin.

During the course of the dinner, all the leaders circulated throughout the room and spoke with one another freely. President Trump spoke with many leaders during the course of the evening. As the dinner was concluding, President Trump went over to Mrs. Trump, where he spoke briefly with President Putin.

Each couple was allowed one translator. The American translator accompanying President Trump spoke Japanese. When President Trump spoke to President Putin, the two leaders used the Russian translator, since the American translator did not speak Russian.

There was no “second meeting” between President Trump and President Putin, just a brief conversation at the end of a dinner. The insinuation that the White House has tried to “hide” a second meeting is false, malicious and absurd.

It is not merely perfectly normal, it is part of a President’s duties, to interact with world leaders. Throughout the G20 and in all his other foreign engagements, President Trump has demonstrated American leadership by representing our interests and values on the world stage.

Read more here.

Trump and Putin talk today by phone

Here is the White House release of information concerning today's phone call between Trump and Putin.

President Donald J. Trump of the United States and President Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation spoke today regarding Syria. President Trump and President Putin agreed that the suffering in Syria has gone on for far too long and that all parties must do all they can to end the violence.

The conversation was a very good one, and included the discussion of safe, or de-escalation, zones to achieve lasting peace for humanitarian and many other reasons. The United States will be sending a representative to the cease-fire talks in Astana, Kazakhstan on May 3-4. They also discussed at length working together to eradicate terrorism throughout the Middle East. Finally, they spoke about how best to resolve the very dangerous situation in North Korea.

hat tip The Conservative Treehouse