WHAT TRUMP IS DOING WITH RUSSIA IS IMPORTANT & DANGEROUS

…Trump talking about Russia & Putin

 

GOP strategist: “This is what happens when you nominate an egomaniacal bozo as your candidate for president…”

 

Donald Trump is so ignorant of politics, he doesn't seem to know that when you run for the most powerful position on the globe, you need to be careful about what you say.

 

As an example, when Trump challenged the Russian hackers saying: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 [Hillary] emails that are missing,” Trump actually said this during a news conference at one of his South Florida resorts. He added later, “They probably have them. I’d like to have them released.” 

 

After he opened his mouth with that little bomb, in a series of afternoon tweets, Trump spokesman Jason Miller said the candidate was merely encouraging other countries to turn over any information relating to Clinton’s emails to US authorities.  “To be clear, Mr. Trump did not call on, or invite, Russia or anyone else to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails today,” Miller wrote.

 

Trump’s challenge however, alarmed many Republican leaders and foreign policy experts, not only for his request of Russia, but also for the signal it sent about their own leader’s worldview. Many were also alarmed by Trump’s remark that he would be “looking at” whether Crimea, which Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014, should be recognized as "Russian territory".

 

Rather than approaching Russia carefully, Trump talked of Putin as a future ally and said he hoped to develop a chummy and mutually beneficial relationship with one of the globe’s most notorious henchmen. In doing so, Trump broke with decades of GOP instincts against Russia that were finely honed during Ronald Reagan’s presidency.

 

Some key Republicans immediately took notice.

 

“It is a very big deal,” stated Mr. Eliot A. Cohen, a former counselor in George W. Bush’s State Department. “Foreign governments sometimes express preferences about who should be elected; that’s already problematic. But to do something in the nature of dirty tricks would be a very, very serious problem.”

 

Even Trump’s own vice-presidential running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, issued a statement just minutes after Trump’s statements.  Gov. Pence stuck close to established GOP orthodoxy. Instead of helping Trump to bait the Russians for revealing Clinton’s emails, Pence said that the FBI must “get to the bottom of who is behind the hacking”. “If it is Russia and they are interfering in our elections, I can assure you both parties and the United States government will ensure there are serious consequences,” Pence’s statement continued.

 

But it didn’t stop there with key Republicans.

 

A spokesman for House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), Brendan Buck, said in a statement: “Russia is a global menace led by a devious thug. Putin should stay out of this election.”

 

However, it was unclear whether Trump’s stupid declaration would hurt or help him politically.  Such comments by normal candidates in a normal election year would normally be a fatal episode. But neither Trump, nor is this year "typical", and as with past controversies, voters may not take Trump seriously.

 

As expected, the classic partisan Republicans rallied immediately to Trump’s defense, blaming the “Lame-stream media” for blowing Trump’s comments out of proportion and trying to shift the focus from Clinton’s judgment.

 

“What’s irresponsible is that more than 30,000 emails were deleted by a crook who broke the law,” stated the former dis-honored House Speaker, Newt Gingrich (R-GA). “I don’t care if it’s the Bulgarians, the Chinese or Haitian immigrants studying at Stanford. Let’s see the 30,000 emails.”

 

But for most of the veteran Republican House members and the GOP strategist Mike Murphy, said many longtime Republicans were completely appalled by Trump’s statement.

 

“This is what happens when you nominate an egomaniacal bozo as your candidate for president of the United States,” Murphy said. “He has jumped the shark into complete embarrassment. . . . He’ll please his half of the Republican Party every day until the end, but that’s not enough to win a general election.”

 

On the stage at the Democratic National Convention, Clinton’s supporters tried to cast Trump as a pawn in Putin’s global ambitions.

 

“The truth is that a Trump victory in November would be a gift to Vladimir Putin, and given what we have learned about Russia’s recent actions, Putin is eager for Trump to win,” former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said. “And that should worry every American.”

 

The truth is that Trump has repeatedly tried to do business in Russia, and Russian investors have been important to his real estate empire, particularly in recent years.

 

In 2008, Trump’s son Donald Jr. told a real estate conference in New York that Russians constitute “a pretty disproportionate cross-section” of Trump’s real estate assets. “We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia,” he added.

 

According to legal papers filed in Florida, Trump’s partners on a project traveled to Moscow in 2006 to sell condos to Russian investors. Trump also sold a mansion in Palm Beach in 2008 for $95 million to Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev; Trump had purchased the home at a bankruptcy auction four years earlier for $41.4 million.

 

This was back when Trump was saying that the 2008 Recession was ”good for us to acquire all that real estate for pennies on the dollar”.

 

Trump has also sought to build a tower in Moscow numerous times since the late 1980s, when he said he had a deal to explore a Trump project in partnership with the Soviet government

 

“We will be in Moscow at some point,” Trump promised in a 2007 deposition.

 

But Trump tried to ignore several questions from reporters about his ties to Russia. “I have nothing to do with Russia,” he told one journalist. “How many times do I have to say that? Are you a smart man? I have nothing to do with Russia.”

 

OK, let’s understand why what Trump is doing is so important and so dangerous.

 

Back in March 2014, Russia annexed Crimea.  After the ouster of the legal Ukrainian president, Russian troops moved in and held an unauthorized election in which Crimean’s voted to rejoin Russia.

 

As The Post reported back then, it was "the first time that one European nation has seized territory from another since the end of World War II." As such, US and European allies all rejected the annexation. Since then, Vice President Biden has declared it an "illegal" occupation.  "The United States stands firmly with the people of Ukraine in the face of continued aggression from Russia and Russian-backed separatists," Biden said last November.

 

So the official position of the U.S. government is that the Russian annexation of Crimea is illegal and dangerous. Trump, though, left open the possibility of simply recognizing Crimea as Russian territory and even perhaps lifting related sanctions

 

But here’s the rub: A Trump foreign policy adviser had previously said, in an interview with Bloomberg, that Russian business interests have expressed excitement about the prospect of a President Trump easing Russian sanctions.

 

Donald Trump is very bad at making the case that he's not Russia's favored candidate in the 2016 U.S. election.

 

It just continues to get worse, and the hole gets deeper in any and all dealings with Donald J. Trump.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2016