For the next couple of weeks business and family will once again take me through several time zones. It affords me a different perspective on events here in the US and how the rest of the world perceives them and us. While I was putting the final details of my packing this morning. I happened to catch this exchange between MSNBC hosts Joy Reid and Rachel Maddow about Donald Trump’s private meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin last Monday in Helsinki, Finland and the possible chaos it could cause in the near future:
“We don’t know what Trump and Putin talked about in the meeting,”
“We don’t know what Trump may have conceded or promised or given away, what he might have told him in terms of U.S. secrets.”
“But because we have to assume the Russians made a recording there, the Russians not only know what happened in that room because Putin was there, but they have a recording that they can manipulate to their desire.”
“So, whatever they want to make it seem like Trump said, whatever they’re going to take to the bank, when they need to say, ‘Hey, listen, the U.S. president gave us permission to do this,’ they’re absolutely free to doctor that tape if they need to.”
“Whatever Trump actually said is probably bad enough, but whatever they want to make him say, they can retroactively do. And there’s no American rebuttal to it because there were no Americans in that room other than Trump and the translator to keep him honest.”
There was much in that whole encounter and the news conference after that made me not only nauseous but raised the hairs on the back of my neck. To even suggest that we would send a former ambassador or any American citizen to Russia to be interrogated is beyond imagination but that is exactly what Trump said he would consider. It is just more evidence that Trump is Putin’s puppet.