Donald Trump seems to think Russia could have, should have been one of our country’s greatest allies. But he is certain Vladimir Putin would agree that “nobody was tougher on Russia,” than himself.
During his chat with Trump last night, designed to disparage President Joe Biden’s summit with Vladimir Putin earlier that day, there was this exchange:
HANNITY: Let me ask you, in your summits and in your conversations with Putin while president, what did you learn about him? Have you spoken to him since you left office? And was it a mistake for Biden not to hold that joint press conference with Putin?
TRUMP: I got along really well with him. Nobody was tougher on Russia, he would say that. But nobody was tougher on Russia. You never heard of Nord Stream. You never heard of all of the things that we did in terms of sanctions, so many sanctions. And I was loving the idea of taking them off. I would have loved to have taken them off as soon as they got their act together.
I think we had a, you know, great shot at having an unbelievable relationship with Russia. It could have been fantastic. It could have been really beneficial to both countries. You know, they need economics. And we need things that they have where they have very valuable land in terms of mineral rights and many other things.
And a lot of good things could have happened. I had a very good relationship with Putin. But nobody treated him tougher. He understood.
I’ve written in previous posts about how Trump’s 2016 campaign manager colluded with Russia and how Trump disgraced our country by displaying loyalty to Putin over the U.S. at their summit in Helsinki. He did the same in a recent statement sending “warmest regards” to Putin, while swiping at Biden. Trump also took the unusual step of deliberately concealing what he and Putin discussed in Helsinki. He still has not revealed what was said.
Trump did not say why he was unable to have the "fantastic" relationship with Russia he wanted. Presumably, it was because the Mueller investigation made it politically impossible. Sad!
It’s worth pointing out that Hannity, who spent a lot of this interview whining about the media being too sympathetic to Democrats, never asked Trump what he and Putin discussed in Helsinki. Also, Trump did not answer Hannity’s question about whether he has spoken with Putin since leaving office.
Trump went on to talk about energy and energy independence. He bizarrely claimed, “We’re not going to be energy independent in two months from now.” Apparently, that’s because windmills “kill everything.” He dropped his claim that windmills cause cancer, at least for the moment, and said this:
TRUMP: They're making windmills all over the place to ruin our land and kill our birds, to kill everything. And we're not going to be -- and they're very intermittent, as you learned from watching over the last four months. It's intermittent energy. It's not good. It's not going to power our great factories. And it's a real -- it's a real problem.
You can watch the full interview below, from the June 17, 2021 Hannity – and thank God this lying ignoramus and likely traitor is no longer in the White House.
Either the Trump administration was harder on Russia than any previous administration OR there was love in the air. Can’t have both, Mr. Trump, can’t have both, however much you may try.
The record of the Pence White House in international affairs was a disaster, and that’s even before they bungled the COVID pandemic and allowed hundreds of thousands of Americans (not to mention millions of people around the world) to die when that situation was completely avoidable. The Pence White House would like to point to their supposed “Abraham Accords” in the Middle East, but they never discuss that those discussions weren’t about peace. Pompeo’s attempts to maneuver in the Middle East were entirely about weapons sales – the “Abraham Accords” were about a $23 billion sale of F-35s to the UAE, dressed up with empty platitudes about peace.
Pence’s childish spokesman was laughed off the stage at the UN, and wound up essentially ignored by actual world leaders, who turned to Angela Merkel for guidance since the Pence White House was unreliable. Perhaps the best example of the failures of the Pence White House (aside from the vicious Montenegro Shove of 2017) would be Ivanka Trump’s embarrassing attempt to interject herself into a discussion of issues at the G20 meeting in 2019, a moment that saw the leaders glance at her in mild annoyance and then completely ignore her. The bizarre irony of the Pence White House’s complete fumbling of international relations is the desperate wish of Pence’s childish spokesman to be given a Nobel Prize. As angry Right Wingers showed back in 2005, ANYONE can be nominated for such a Prize, but it doesn’t mean anything unless the Nobel Committee chooses to give the award. In the case of President Obama, they had good reason and did bestow that award. In the case of Pence’s childish spokesman, it’s clear that they laughed it out of the room as vigorously as the UN representatives had laughed him off their stage.
