I can’t wait to see how this will be spun into the narrative of “Trump gave Putin everything he wanted.”
I also can’t wait to see who’ll at least have the courage to mention in passing that the US not giving an inch on the Crimea is an important positive development.
I’ll even watch the news shows tonight to find out. Anybody willing to take bets?
No bets because the US news is US-centric even when it’s about someone else — to your frustration. I’d be interested to see if other news sources do mention it.
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Something tells me that if Trump had handed the Crimea over to the Russians, it would have been triumphantly reported from here to the moon as evidence of collusion. I don’t think it’s about self-centeredness (which is very real) but about being desperate to find proof for a failed theory.
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Exactly nobody will be paying attention to it, theory or not.
Everyone will boggle over this (did you really expect anything else out of either of them) :
Transcript: Trump And Putin’s Joint Press Conference
…REPORTER: Did you want President Trump to win the election and did you direct any of your officials to help him do that?
PUTIN: Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Because he talked about bringing the U.S. Russia relationship back to normal.….
and
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 want him to never do it again?
TRUMP: So let me just say that we have two thoughts. 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.
My people came to me, Dan Coates, came to me and some others they said they think it’s Russia. I have President Putin. He just said it’s not Russia.
I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be. But I really do want to see the server but I have, I have confidence in both parties.
I really believe that this will probably go on for a while but I don’t think it can go on without finding out what happened to the server. What happened to the servers of the Pakistani gentleman that worked on the DNC?
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.
I think it’s a disgrace that we can’t get Hillary Clinton’s thirty three thousand e-mails.
I have great confidence in my intelligence people but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today and what he did is an incredible offer.
He offered to have the people working on the case come and work with their investigators, with respect to the 12 people. I think that’s an incredible offer. Ok? Thank you.
PUTIN: I’d like to add something to this. After all, I was an intelligence officer myself and I do know how dossiers are made up. Just a second. That’s the first thing. Now the second thing.
I believe that Russia is a democratic state and I hope you’re not denying this right to your own country. You’re not denying that United States is a democracy. Do you believe the United States is a democracy?
And if so, if it is a democratic state, then the final conclusion and this kind of dispute can only be delivered by a trial, by the court, not by the executive, by the law enforcement.
For instance, the Concorde company that was brought up is being accused of interference. But this company does not constitute the Russian state.
It does not represent the Russian state. And I brought several examples before.
Well, you have a lot of individuals in the United States, take George Soros for instance, with multibillion capitals. But does that make him, his position the posture of the United States. No it does not. It is the same case.
There is the issue of trying a case in the court and the final say is for the court to deliver.
We are now talking about the private individuals and not about the particular states. And as far as the most recent allegations is concerned about the Russian intelligence officers, we do have an intergovernmental treaty.
Please do send us the request. We will analyze it properly and we will send a formal response. And as I said we can extend this cooperation. But we should do it on a reciprocal basis because we would await our Russian counterparts to provide us access to the persons of interest for us, who we believe can have something to do with intelligences.
Let’s discuss the specific issues and not use the Russia and the U.S. relationship as a loose change, for this internal political struggle.
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People are in such desperation that they are about to read tea leaves and ox’s entrails to be able to scream collusion. I’ve never seen anything this pathetic in my life.
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And the circus is back in town:
“Donald Trump is either an asset of Russian intelligence or really enjoys playing one on TV.
Everything that happened in Helsinki today only reinforces that conclusion.”
Everything, this tool says.
Losers, losers, losers.
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Trump not colluding with Russia proves that he knew in advance that people would accuse him of collusion, therefore demonstrating, obviously, that he in fact wished to collude with Russia. Thus, in an alternate timeline he did collude with Russia, making him a perfidious colluder by weight of facts. QED.
That bastard. 🙂 Even if he’d never been born, he would have done it.
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There are dozens of articles in the U.S. news media by now talking about the summit press conference, and the few that reference Crimea at all say something like,”It’s shameful that Trump never brought up Ukraine or Crimea…”
Of course, NONE of them mention Putin’s statement that “He [Trump] continues to maintain that it was illegal to annex it.”
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This is beyond shameful. And it’s exactly what Putin wanted, this ridiculous, pathetic chaos, this braying at the skies over nothing whatsoever.
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From the same transcript, right after the whole election questions:
REPORTER: A question for President Putin. Two questions for you, sir. Can you tell me what President Trump may have indicated to you about officially recognizing Crimea as part of Russia? And then secondly, sir, do you, does the Russian government have any compromising material on President Trump or his family?
PUTIN: chuckles The posture of President Trump on Crimea is well known and he stands firmly by it, he continue to maintain that it was illegal to annex it. We – our viewpoint is different. We held a referendum in strict compliance with the UN Charter and international legislation.
For us, this issue, we put unintelligible to this issue.
And now to the compromising material.
Yeah, I did heard these rumors that we allegedly collected compromising material on Mr. Trump when he was visiting Moscow.
Our distinguished colleague, let me tell you this.
When President Trump visited 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.
But let’s take St. Petersburg economic forum, for instance. There were over 500 American businessmen – the 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.
Well, please just disregard these issues and don’t think about this anymore again.
TRUMP: And I have to say if they had it, it would have been out long ago and if anybody watched Peter Strzok testify over the last couple of days and I was in Brussels watching it, it was a disgrace to the FBI, it was a disgrace to our country. And you would say that was a total witch hunt. Thank you very much everybody. Thank you.
Let’s just say the media is seizing on the “compromising material” part of this question. It all depends on how much you believe of what Putin is saying. I do find it hard to believe he would make an announcement on Crimea to that effect if he had any inkling of the contrary from the U.S. government. Watch troop movements, I guess? I’m pretty sure he’s been laughing himself senseless for months.
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I am watching the troop movements. As I said, the situation is very iffy right now. Until it becomes clear what happens around Mariupol and in the Azov Sea, we won’t know anything definitively.
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Reblogged this on James' Ramblings.
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