The Left's Trump-Putin Meltdown

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robert spencer 7/18/18

In a press conference with Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump refused to validate the findings of a deeply corrupt and compromised intelligence community that has been working assiduously since before he was even elected to discredit and destroy him, and now the sky is falling.

Barack Obama’s CIA director John Brennan, who calls himself a “nonpartisan American” but who voted for Communist Party candidate Gus Hall for President in 1976, tweeted in all-out hysterical mode: “Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the threshold of ‘high crimes & misdemeanors.’ It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots: Where are you???”

Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) outdid even Brennan in hysteria, tweeting a call for a military coup: “Where are our military folks ? The Commander in Chief is in the hands of our enemy!”

Obama’s Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, who once called the Muslim Brotherhood “largely secular,” said that the Trump/Putin press conference was “truly unbelievable. On the world’s stage, in front of the entire globe, the President of the United States essentially capitulated and seems intimidated by Vladimir Putin. So it was amazing and very, very disturbing.”

Less hysterically, but in the same vein, 2020 Presidential hopeful Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) tweeted: “The whole world just watched as the President sided with Putin over U.S. Intelligence Agencies. There is no doubt that Putin has launched attacks on the very heart of our democracy, and by not standing up to him today, the President has invited him to do it again.”

In response to that, David Horowitz offered a note of sanity: “US intelligence agencies like the CIA headed by John Brennan who voted for Communist Party head during the height of the Cold War, and launched the Russia-Collusion witch-hunt, and Comey’s FBI.” Horowitz also observed: “Long time appeasers of the Soviet empire in the Democratic Party want to re-start the Cold War with a Russia greatly diminished in power and influence rather than see if we can make deals with this thug regime to reduce the dangers of nuclear war, & rein in Iran’s terror regime.”

Longtime foes and targets of the Left should have seen this, but some didn’t: the hysteria was not all on the Left. Newt Gingrich tweeted: “President Trump must clarify his statements in Helsinki on our intelligence system and Putin. It is the most serious mistake of his presidency and must be corrected—-immediately.”

What was Trump’s “treason”? His “high crimes & misdemeanors”? “The most serious mistake of his presidency”? In the words of NBC’s Chuck Todd, it was “essentially confessing to the world that he believes Putin more [than] the United States of America and its agencies.

But this was, not unexpectedly, wildly overstated and misleading. President Trump did not say that he trusted Putin more than he trusted the United States of America. He expressed his skepticism at the findings of intelligence agencies that have been shown over the last year and a half to have strayed far from their mission and become deeply partisan, shockingly corrupt organizations bent on finding enough dirt on him to remove him from the Oval Office.

The President has repeatedly referred to Robert Mueller’s Russian collusion investigation as a “witch hunt,” and that is exactly what it is. On Tuesday, Trump walked back some of his remarks at the press conference, saying: “I accept our intelligence community’s conclusion that meddling took place” from Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign, but added that the meddlers “could be other people also. There’s a lot of people out there.” He also tweeted: “Thank you @RandPaul. ‘The President has gone through a year and a half of totally partisan investigations - what’s he supposed to think?’”

Indeed. Just as there are a lot of people who may have meddled in the election, there are a lot of people in Washington, such as Mueller, James Comey, and Peter Strzok, who have been determinedly working to frame him for months for collusion with Russia for which they have been so far unable to produce any evidence. President Trump was right to be skeptical of the intelligence community, and should stand firm on that skepticism – as well as call for a thorough investigation and reform of the FBI.

It is also interesting that the people who are crying “treason” the loudest today never uttered the word when Barack Obama shipped billions of dollars in cash in the dark of night to the Islamic Republic of Iran, even as the mullahs were chanting “Death to America.” Treason is defined in American law as giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Wouldn’t billions given to a terror-supporting rogue state be a great deal more aid and comfort to an enemy than some skepticism about our manifestly corrupt intelligence agencies at a press conference? Of course – but the Leftists who are in hysterics over the Trump/Putin press conference are the same Leftists who applauded Obama’s generosity to the Islamic Republic, and fought desperately to preserve their man’s disastrous nuclear deal with that outlaw state.

It’s a classic case of projection: the ones crying loudest about “treason” today are ones who are actually traitors. 


Thank You Mr Spencer and FPM.