Trump tells aides not to talk publicly about Russia policy moves
Source: NBC
President Donald Trump's national security advisers spent months trying to convince him to sign off on a plan to supply new U.S. weapons to Ukraine to aid in the country's fight against Russian-backed separatists, according to multiple senior administration officials.
Yet when the president finally authorized the major policy shift, he told his aides not to publicly tout his decision, officials said. Doing so, Trump argued, might agitate Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to the officials.
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Officials said the increasingly puzzling divide between Trump's policy decisions and public posture on Russia stems from his continued hope for warmer relations with Putin and stubborn refusal to be seen as appeasing the media or critics who question his silence or kind words for the Russian leader.
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Behind the scenes, however, Trump has recently taken a sharper tone on Putin, administration officials said, but the shift seems more a reaction to the Russian leader challenging the president's strength than a new belief that he's an adversary. Putin's claim earlier this month that Russia has new nuclear-capable weapons that could hit the U.S., a threat he underscored with video simulating an attack, "really got under the president's skin," one official said.
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Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-tells-aides-not-talk-publicly-about-russia-policy-moves-n861256
flibbitygiblets
(7,220 posts)Don't want to make Daddy Vladdy maddy? Afraid he'll unleash all the kompromat?
Pluvious
(4,305 posts)Wellstone ruled
(34,661 posts)Trump is scared about pissing off Puttin.
Ilsa
(61,690 posts)highplainsdem
(48,892 posts)Leghorn21
(13,522 posts)Every single day these sources are reporting all this really intimate information, and I just got this weird picture of Spanky being TOTALLY SURROUNDED by...oh, babysitters I guess well call them.
I mean, every single day...well, I hope he hears about this intimate information EVERY SINGLE DAY and gets more paranoid than he already is, by god
Weird, man