Sid Schwab: Trumps meetings with Russians havent gone well
Opinions may vary. Mine is that Putin played Trump like a balalaika.
Example: Agreeing to work with Russia to create an impenetrable cybersecurity unit is like inviting Mexican drug cartels to build his border wall. (After bipartisan derision, Trump pretended he knew all along it couldnt happen. Riiight.) Worse was denouncing, on foreign soil, our intelligence agencies and free press while claiming no one knows who hacked the election. Which never occurred. But its Obamas fault. Even Trumps UN ambassador said everybody knows it was Russia. (Keep your résumé up to date, Nikki.) Backfilling, she defended Ivankas place-taking for daddy, saying shes part of a public service family. I may not understand the term.
Every involved U.S. intelligence agency and every member of Congressional intelligence committees, Republican and Democrat, agrees that Russia alone was behind the hacking. Virtually all acknowledge its purpose was to help Trump win, and that it was on orders from Putin. Still to be determined is to what extent Trumps team was in on it, although Don Jr. is stumbling toward implicating everyone, making a tougher sell for Foxolimjonesians insisting its fake news. (If there werent still people who claim Trump never lies and was an honorable businessman, itd be an impossible sell.) Besides, who wouldnt believe denials from a man who ordered hacking and one who benefitted?
This much is clear: Under Trump, therell be no consequences for Russian election interference, let alone unequivocal acknowledgement. Time to move forward, the men agreed. Because a malign invasion by a foreign adversary is no big deal. Not to Trump, not to his loyalists. Unless the aim had been different.
http://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/schwab-trumps-meetings-with-russians-havent-gone-well/?utm_source=DAILY+HERALD&utm_campaign=3138c468ee-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d81d073bb4-3138c468ee-228635337