Rep. Maxine Waters visited MSNBC yesterday and delivered the kind of straight talk about Donald Trump’s meeting with Vladimir Putin that all Democrats and liberals should emulate, especially on Fox News.
Regardless of what you think of Waters, her blunt assessment of Trump’s duplicity, if not outright treachery, in his meeting with Putin at the G-20 yesterday was right on the mark. And this should not be a matter of debate. The leader of this country met with a foreign adversary who is interfering with our democracy and sucked up to him. And that was right after Trump publicly denigrated the institutions that have been trying to warn us about Russia’s chicanery: the U.S. intelligence community and the media.
“Americans should be very, very concerned” about what happened, Waters said about the Trump and Putin meeting. As far as we can tell, they did “not have a real discussion, a real conversation and delve into our real concerns.”
Waters also noted that Trump did not get any kind of commitment from Putin that Russia will never interfere with our elections again. “Americans want to hear that kind of conversation,” she said.
In other words, Trump just bringing up the subject with Putin was not nearly enough.
Waters also questioned the legitimacy of the Syrian ceasefire agreement the two leaders supposedly reached, asking whether Putin is in a position to negotiate and decide on Syria’s behalf. “Not that I care about [Syria’s president] Assad but I would assume that he would have something to say about it,” she added.
In short, she said she thinks Americans are “getting played” by Trump “and certainly we’re getting played by Putin.”
She blasted Trump for meeting with Putin “without any note takers, without any staff, without others who should be in the room who really understand foreign policy and who really understand Putin” and for leaving the meeting “saying how honored he is to meet with him and how, in fact, they’re going to start working together.”
Most importantly, Trump is not putting America first. Watters delivered her coup de grâce:
WATERS: This is all about lifting those sanctions. And of course Tillerson was in the room because that’s at the top of his agenda, to lift those sanctions so that they can drill into the Arctic. … People, we must keep our eye on the sanctions. Putin didn’t just want Trump elected because he didn’t like Hillary. It is because he knew that Trump would be a part of helping to lift those sanctions.
Donald Trump and his Fox News propaganda team have reacted to his unpopularity not by reaching out to his critics and doubters but by demonizing and attacking them with rhetoric that seems to grow more aggressively inflammatory each day.
This is not a time for the kind of pussyfooting, defensive debate that we usually hear from the left when they go on Fox. We need just the kind of bold, unflinching response that Waters is providing.
Watch what we need more of below, from MSNBC's July 7, 2017 All In with Chris Hayes.
extensively here: http://www.newshounds.us/fox_news_hatriotism_trump_putin_g_20_edition_070817
and a little here: http://www.newshounds.us/just_like_trump_fox_wants_to_move_on_from_russia_s_meddling_in_our_election_070717
Unfortunately, nobody’s listening to me and – not meaning to boast – but I’ve seen next to no one on MSNBC nor CNN nor certainly Fox put it all together in such stark, detailed terms. Not only that but some of the my big progressive web site haunts like Daily Kos are largely blowing off the topic.
Progressives should be spending this week giving the topic of Putin owning Trump the #Benghazi! treatment. It’s that urgent!
