To hear Fox’s “senior strategic analyst” and retired four-star general Jack Keane tell it, Vladimir Putin has never met such an awesome specimen of American power and foreign policy mojo as Donald J. Trump. UPDATED
Keane visited Fox's America’s Newsroom today with some familiar Trump-friendly rhetoric.
KEANE: I think the four presidents that [Putin’s] dealt with, this is clearly the strongest. In fairness to Clinton and Bush, they were dealing with different issues. The global issues were certainly different.
But by comparison to Obama, he’s gone through a major transformation.
Keane went on to echo the spin, heard repeatedly on the network, that despite Trump’s friendly talk about Putin, his actions have been tough.
KEANE: Certainly, President Trump has said he wants to have a decent relationship with Russia and move the ball forward. But what he has seen this president do since he took office in January – push back on North Korea to the point now no ballistic or nuclear testing in nine months and a potential for denuclearization remains to be seen.
Actually, it’s shocking that someone like Keane would not see Trump’s suck-up summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un as the strategic debacle that it was. I think we can be sure Putin will.
Keane continued his slobbering over Trump’s supposed foreign-policy acumen with Iran, Syria and even Russia as well as Trump’s tough talk in Europe that Keane falsely claimed got NATO to “up their defense.”
Keane also misleadingly praised Trump for sanctioning Russia over its election meddling. Not mentioned? Congress pushed him into the sanctions and there was bipartisan agreement Trump did not do enough.
Yet Keane reiterated the Fox line saying, “Remember [Putin] pays attention to strength and to resolve, not rhetoric.”
Rather than challenge this BS, anchor Bill Hemmer pushed the other regularly-heard, Trump-friendly meme, that any problems with Russia are former President Barack Obama’s fault. “Really, this whole thing went south four years ago, in 2014,” Hemmer declared. “Putin goes into eastern Ukraine and takes over Crimea.” He followed with a clip of Trump saying “President Obama allowed that to happen. That was on his watch, not on my watch.”
“The point is, when there was no pushback four years ago, Putin had a runway and that’s what you’re describing to us today,” Hemmer added.
Neither of them mentioned that Trump chose as his campaign manager, a guy who worked to help Russia’s efforts in Ukraine, Paul Manafort, currently in jail in the U.S. as he awaits trial for money laundering, bank fraud and other charges.
“The United States is not going to concede Crimea to the Russians,” Keane said, and he went on to predict that there would be no movement on the subject from either Trump or Putin. The reason he thought so? Russia plans to meddle in an upcoming Ukrainian election. Despite the indictment of 12 Russian officers for meddling in our election on Friday, Keane did not hint at any concerns over Russia’s meddling in Ukraine. Keane described Russia’s efforts in disturbingly friendly terms, as “a massive information campaign.”
KEANE: There’s an election coming in Ukraine next year and Putin is conducting a massive information campaign inside of Ukraine, affecting the people. He’s trying to get a political change in the order of things in Ukraine so he gets a favorable outcome and influence in that country, politically, that he doesn’t have right now. He’s gonna wait for that, wait for those results.
Watch Keane's troubling "strategy analysis" below, from the July 16, 2018 America’s Newsroom.
10:31 PM Update: Boy, did Keane change his tune after the press conference!
Note to FOX – Russia is NOT our ally or friend, and regardless of the great ratings it may give you, you are putting American lives in danger.