By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

President Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday in Helsinki, Finland. This post is going to give you my view of the entire event and it’s probably going to tick off both sides. I will tell you I think yesterday was a mistake by President Trump. He has done tremendous things since coming into office and I think the purpose of the trip was to mend fences with an old foe so we could work together. If that is the way President Trump views a dictator and former KGB/FSB agent, that is a mistake, but it is not treasonous and it is not collusion either.

It was a no-win situation for Trump to have that presser after his meeting with Putin. And to give the appearance of siding with Putin over our intelligence agencies is not what Trump meant. He meant what he said… that he has faith in and supports HIS intel guys. Not the ones left over from the Obama administration. Those just happen to be the ones that were left in charge of the FBI and started this whole witch hunt against Trump in the first place. You can’t blame him for wanting his name cleared and for Americans to just let him do his job as the legitimate president that he is.

The FBI, led by people who are anti-Trump, is a disgrace and they need to be gutted and undergo a full reboot with serious background checks and vetting. There are good people there that need to be kept, but a lot of them need to go. Their conniving duplicity is obvious. Look at Rosenstein indicting twelve Russian GRU officers just before Trump was to meet with Putin and another female Russian operative being arrested here in the US for espionage… timing is everything. The left is claiming that the NRA is in bed with the Russians, which is just preposterous.

The FBI and the DOJ threw Trump under the bus before he was even elected thanks to Barack Obama and his clandestine attacks. President Trump returned the favor yesterday by throwing American intelligence agencies under the bus for what they did in the 2016 elections. This does not lead anywhere good folks.

Today, for the record, Trump is saying that Russia did meddle in the 2016 election. Back at the White House on Tuesday, the president told reporters that he said he meant he doesn’t see why Russia “wouldn’t” be responsible. He also said he accepts the American intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia interfered in the election, but he denied that his campaign had colluded in the effort.

Ex-CIA head John Brennan was unhinged yesterday over all this. He stated, “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???” Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and a whole slew of Democrats followed suit. Exactly how do you get “high crimes & misdemeanors” out of this? Trump confronted Putin on election meddling. Listen to his words carefully, he did not say he believed him… he said, “My people came to me, [Director of National Intelligence] Dan Coats came to me, some others, they said they think it’s Russia. I have President Putin. He just said it’s not Russia. I will say this, I don’t see any reason why it would be.” That is where he claims he misspoke.

Later in the day, Brennan appeared on MSNBC to call for Trump officials to resign. “I cannot understand how the national security team can continue to abide by this and how Pompeo and Bolton and Kelly can continue in their jobs,” he said. “This, I think, rises to the point of good American patriots resigning in objection to that performance by Donald Trump.” Chuck Schumer also wants to put President Trump on trial for yesterday. I kid you not.

Some such as Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) seemingly called for a military coup to overthrow Trump. He said, “Where are our military folks ? The Commander in Chief is in the hands of our enemy!” That sounds like insurrection to me. What is the left going for… an actual coup? I think they are and they want a civil war in the streets with the right. We live in dangerous, revolutionary times and the left has lurched into full-blown communism, while inciting violence at every turn. This is the same guy who stated that FBI agent Peter Strzok should be awarded the Purple Heart. Cohen also loves the communists of Cuba.

CNN analyst and former CIA intelligence official Philip Mudd wondered aloud Monday when a shadow government will emerge to oppose President Trump. A partial transcript follows:

COOPER: Senator McCain is saying [the joint Trump-Putin press conference] was the most disgraceful display essentially by an American president on the world stage. Phil do you agree with that?

MUDD: I do, but you have to step back even a short time after this and say, what next? You’ve seen senators come out. In the past, you’ve seen a senator in the midst of a painful illness, Senator McCain, Senators like Jeff Flake who are leaving the Senate. Now you see Marco Rubio still obviously in the fight speaking out.

My question would be: when do members of the president’s inner circle say “look, we have an overseas dilemma where you are portraying us, in terms of the American government, as worse than a tyrant — that is, Vladimir Putin.”

Secretary of Homeland Security came out with statements this week about continued Russian interference. This was not on Obama’s watch. That’s this week. FBI director continues the investigation. Department of Justice continues support for the investigation. Congress continues saying this investigation’s legitimate.

Curious point in American government: when do we see almost a shadow government come out and say “we cannot side with the government,” whether it’s the Babinet or the Senate.

Sounds a lot like treason to me on Mudd’s part. He’s nuts anyway, but he does have a platform even if it is CNN.

https://twitter.com/joshdcaplan/status/1018935022177411072

Or how about this from Breitbart:

On Monday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s All In, MSNBC Contributor and former Watergate prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks stated President Trump’s performance in Helsinki “will live in infamy as much as the Pearl Harbor attack or Kristallnacht.”

Wine-Banks stated that the perpetrators in Watergate were Americans and that in 2016, “we were burglarized, this time, by foreign agents. And it’s just as serious to me as the Cuban Missile Crisis, in terms of an attack, or the 9/11 attack. The president is taking the side of the people who attacked us instead of trying to prevent a future attack. He has done nothing to make sure that the elections four months away are going to be safe. And I would say that his performance today will live in infamy as much as the Pearl Harbor attack or Kristallnacht. And it’s really a serious issue that we need to deal with.”

Wine-Banks’ statements are nothing short of shameful and disgusting.

The rhetoric is sky-high over all this and the Dems are trying to go in for the kill. It won’t work. I do not think this was the end of the world as the left and some on the right do. In my viewpoint, Russia meddled in the last election just as they have meddled in our elections for decades. It’s nothing new. And in some ways, Trump has been tough on Russia with sanctions, expelling diplomats and telling NATO they need to strengthen against the Russian state. But just as we would have screamed if Obama had done what Trump did yesterday, I have to take exception with him meeting with a stone cold killer, communist dictator that would wipe us off the planet given the chance. The left is totally out of line and off their meds. But the right needs to take a stance on this as well and come to an understanding of our dealings with Russia. Not cuddle with them.

As RedState stated, Trump’s “statements in Helsinki not only let Russia off the hook for really bad behavior but they made Trump seem obsessed by the Mueller investigation.” I will repeat again that Trump has been tough on Russia which the left would love you to forget. They need to stop freaking out every time Trump talks to Putin. It’s by design and it is tiresome.

From Foreign Policy:

More than a year into his presidency, Trump’s Russia policy is far more forceful than that of his predecessor. It is substantive, antagonistic to Russian aims, and not at all to the Kremlin’s liking. Still, this fact has been buried by politics, optics, and the president’s own behavior. Some in the Russian government, however, continue to cling to the idea that Trump is on their side. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently voiced his own theory of the relationship. He explained in an interview with Russian newspaper Kommersant that Trump “knows perfectly that the Congress would make him [take action]. If the U.S. president refuses to do what the overwhelming majority of congressmen want, and there is such a majority, I say once again, his veto will be overcome.”

Lavrov is right that Congress supported and adopted many of the new Russia sanctions, and it deserves credit for those moves. This does not, however, negate the president’s own policy choices. Trump was not required to provide lethal military aid to Ukraine. He did not have to expand the Magnitsky list and could have made use of national security waivers to avoid adding new names. His Justice Department did not have to force RT to register as a foreign agent or cease its operations in the United States. He could have easily stayed quiet on Moscow’s poisoning of ex-spy Sergei Skripal in Britain rather than crack down on Russia’s diplomatic presence in the United States.

After all this, if Lavrov still believes that Trump is eager to pursue some kind of detente with Russia, his denial borders on delusion. Trump’s Russia policy is his own. Either Lavrov is playing to a domestic audience and refusing to admit the Kremlin’s mistaken faith in Trump or getting played.

Trump’s policy toward the Kremlin should be evaluated on its merits. If you extract partisan politics and strip away justifiable distaste for his general conduct, what remains is arguably the most effective Russia policy since the end of the Cold War.

Those are very relevant points. Trump’s rhetoric is many times quite different from his actions and I personally would like to see how this plays out. The Democrats are so nuts over this, they are going to make President Trump look like a statesman over Russia. If you truly want to see those that were beholding to Russia, look at ‘flexible’ Obama and Hillary Clinton, who not only gave away our uranium, but our military and cyber secrets via Skolkovo.

I hope that a naive meeting like this with Putin does not happen again. We should only sanction meetings that are not in private and that the press is not given free reign to lie and skew the narrative on. That’s not the place for it and frankly the media has become an enemy to Americans and to our government. They are by and large controlled by communists these days. Trump may have misspoken and stepped in it, but the left just had a meltdown heard around the world.

https://twitter.com/freedom_moates/status/1018967857764421633