As it was with his meeting with Kim Jong Un, the one certain take away from the disastrous Helsinki Summit is this: When it comes to direct confrontation with demagogues, the “tough guy” image Trump would like us to believe he portrays is pretty much nothing but vaporous prattling. The entire world was left wondering WTF was this? Whatever was or was not accomplished, we are left with one of two stark conclusions about the man running our country. Is the president of the United States an out of control narcissist, or does Putin have something egregiously compromising on him? The most defensible explanation for his bazaar performance is the first- that he is absolutely obsessed with the idea that nothing must taint his questionable election, to the point of embarrassing himself and the country in order to put his mind at ease.
At the summit press conference however, President Putin was asked a question by Reuters reporter Jeff Mason that is puzzlingly contradictory, but was answered in such a way Trump must have felt he was kicked in the balls. Mason asked if he directed any of his officials to help Trump get elected. Putin replied yes, he did, because he felt Trump could more normalize relations between the two countries. In fairness, before Putin thus responded, there was a lengthy discussion where both Putin and Trump interjected remarks. But still, after repeatedly denying any involvement, Putin gave that answer to that question. Slip of the tongue?
Putin also “offered” to allow the Mueller team to come to Russia to conduct investigations, but of course only after Russia reciprocated with their own investigations. During that discussion, Putin suggested the U.S. extradite Bill Browder, the financier who was the driving force behind the Magnitsky Act. There is probably no one else on the entire planet that Putin would rather get his hands on. And astonishingly, Trump thought the whole concept of Russian involvement in a U.S. investigation about Russia was a perfectly peachy idea.
Trump’s conduct during the entire conference was mind-boggling. Perhaps feeling that the international community would be just as likely to appreciate his campaign rhetoric as those attending one of his political rallies in a red midwestern state, he took the opportunity once again to expound on his smashing electoral college victory and interject comments about Hillary’s e-mails. One wonders if he felt crushed when neither uproarious applause nor raucous cheering were forthcoming.
Trump’s performance in Helsinki convinced me more than ever that at some point in time our nation will be confronted by that second explanation, that underneath Trump’s hyper protestations about any connection he has with Russia, there is something lurking that must be exceedingly distressing to the president. We have seen this man’s attempts to undermine our democratic norms and institutions since his inauguration, and what we saw in Helsinki was an even more sinister extension of that behavior. This is a president who threatens the free press, and stakes a claim to patriotism by using the American flag to provoke national dissension and deny first amendment rights. Even more hypocritical and unpatriotic is a president who won’t defend the citizens* or intelligence agencies of his own country, but does the bidding of the adversarial president of another.
*Besides Bill Browder, we later learned in the mix of U.S. citizens Trump is considering offering up to Putin is former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul. The fact that I am sitting here typing the previous sentence should scare the shit out of all of us.
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