![]() ![]() (Still, the Russian Ministry of Defense jumped on the vague talk of cooperation, saying Tuesday that it was ready to implement Trump and Putin’s vision of national security.) But the news conference after the meeting showed that Trump is an ally on the most fundamental level. No agreement was signed, and apparently, no issue of substance was discussed: not Syria, not Ukraine, not human rights. To Russian observers, it seemed like nothing else really happened at the summit. Bush did in 2005) or simply waiting out the tirades from Putin and his foreign minister at the start of every meeting and phone call, a ritual that Obama officials called, derisively, “the airing of grievances.” ![]() Other presidents have responded by either rebuking and lecturing Putin ( as George W. We can only hope that realism will prevail.” “These words will bring out insanity in his enemies, but this is the declaration of a realist. “The unreasonableness and stupidity of the USA (read - Obama) plus the ‘witch hunt’ are the reasons, according to Trump, for the terminally ruined relations with Russia,” Pushkov wrote. On his way to meet Putin in Helsinki, Trump tweeted what Russians have long insisted: This state of affairs is all Barack Obama’s fault. “It’s nice to hear that Obama is at fault for everything,” Pavlovsky says of how the tweet went down in Moscow.Īlexey Pushkov, a prominent Russian senator, tweeted the same. president whose understanding of truth aligns so well with the Russian one that it’s become increasingly difficult to tell them apart. Anything that proves him to be at fault is publicly labeled a provocation - Russian for “fake news” - and anything that proves him innocent is truth, no matter how baffling, bizarre or downright impossible.Īnd now, the Kremlin has a U.S. ![]() When he is given proof, he claims it’s fake. Whenever he is confronted with these allegations, Putin demands proof. “It’s hard for me to imagine their conversation,” says political consultant Gleb Pavlovsky, who served as a Putin adviser during his first decade in power. After years of churning out fabulist explanations for Russian actions that always exonerate the Russian government, the Kremlin has finally found a willing audience for Putin’s version of reality: the leader of the free world. Putin, it turns out, is no longer alone in the world. Whatever it may have shown about Russian kompromat or Trump collusion, at a deeper level the meeting was even more revealing. The summit left official Washington in shock, seeking some explanation for Trump’s refusal yet again to confront, or even criticize, Putin. ABOVE: The lights briefly went out in the Cabinet Room of the White House on Tuesday as President Trump read a statement meant to clarify his Helsinki summit comments. ![]() She was the Moscow correspondent for Foreign Policy and the New Yorker. Perspective Julia Ioffe is a correspondent at GQ.Predictably, the two agreed that the narrative of Russian meddling in the 2016 election - supported by a body of evidence that seems to swell by the day - could not possibly be true because, as Trump said, “I don’t see any reason why it would be.” (Of course, he insisted the next day that he’d meant to say the exact opposite.) Putin gave Trump a soccer ball commemorating the World Cup, but the two may as well have exchanged tinfoil hats. Putin went down the George-Soros-as-puppet-master rabbit hole and claimed, falsely, that a London-based antagonist of his had given Hillary Clinton $400 million. Trump spoke of “the Pakistani gentleman,” echoing false right-wing media reports about a Democratic IT worker, and reprised the debunked theory that the Democratic National Committee withheld its servers - and critical information - from law enforcement. After more than two hours in private Monday at their summit in Helsinki, President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin indulged in some of their favorite conspiracy theories. ![]()
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