Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin Meet For The First Time

The meeting of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin has the mainstream media foaming at the mouth after the confirmation of Russian election meddling. The MSM hopes to use the average person’s ignorance of typical foreign policy as a means of smearing Donald Trump’s reputation as much as they can.

Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin

Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin met for the very first time, leading the media, like the New York Times, to claim that Trump is “throwing into doubt” relationships and assumptions of reciprocity between allies, particularly NATO alliances (1).

This comes just after the Justice Department indicted 12 Russian Intelligence agents for hacking the Democratic National Committee in an attempt to thwart Hillary’s presidential campaign.

It seems ironic, considering Russian hacking merely exposed the corruption of the DNC and Clinton’s overtaking of it, to ruin Bernie Sanders’ chance of winning (3).

Foreign Electoral Intervention Is A Common Practice And Not Exclusive To Russia

The mainstream media is upset that the DNC was exposed as corrupt. Moreover, the history of democratic election meddling is a long one. And not just in the United States and Russia.

For instance, one study claims that the United States government has become involved in over 80 different elections in the 20th century, whereas Russia comes in place around 30.

Politicians take donations all of the time through foreign governments like Nicolas Sarkozy did in 2007 when he accepted $5 million Euros from Mahammar Gadafi (4).

Last year, in August, the now-president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, called for Turkish citizens in Germany to vote against the CDU/CSU, the SDP, and the Green Party.

The leader called Merkel and others “enemies of Turkey.” Angela responded by stating everyone had the right to cast their own vote in a democratic election.

The German foreign minister said his statements were “unprecedented acts of interference in the sovereignty of our country.”

The truth is that election meddling is commonplace in the international system. There are countless examples of electoral intervention between powerful nations.

Exposing the fact that the Russian government interfered with the US campaign, does nothing but show the media’s intention to take advantage of the average person’s ignorance of foreign policy and election meddling, for the sake of smearing Donald Trump as much as they possibly can.

Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin Meeting

Nevertheless, everyone is closely watching the interaction between the two leaders. Trump and Putin are supposed to talk about a number of different subjects, including trade, nuclear arms, and China.

However, Trump didn’t say anything to Putin about the electoral intervention.

Mr. Putin suggested the idea of a meeting back in March, where he stated that he needed the American government to lift sanctions on his country’s economy and their oligarchs (1).

According to The New York Times, Trump began his meeting with Russian leader by saying it was the fault of the American government for perpetuating a terrible relationship between the two nations (1).

Mr. Trump, in a series of tweets on Monday, said that the investigation into Vladimir Putin’s government was a “rigged witch hunt (1).”

Trump didn’t point out many of Russian transgressions, including the annexation of Crimea, the support for Ukrainian rebels, and supporting the Assad regime in Syria.

Russia’s Interference With The 2016 Election

As it was previously reported, the American government released a 29-page indictment of 12 Russian intelligence agents last Friday.

They confirmed that the Russian government did play a role in the 2016 election, particularly, the hacking of the Democratic National Committee as well as the Clinton presidential campaign (2).

According to The Times, the Russians played a role through phishing attacks to access the operations of Democratic operations, money laundering, and to break into state election boards (2).

The report confirmed what everyone has known for a long time, that other nation-states interfere with the electoral process of other nations as a regular practice. It really isn’t much of a surprise.

They released the report shortly before his meeting with Vladimir Putin, a clear attempt to add tension between the two leaders and stoke the fire.

Previously, Trump has denied the fact that the Russian government may have been involved. During a news conference on Friday, Rod J Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, said there will always be “adversaries” who try and exacerbate differences for the sake of divide and conquer.

Trump pointed out the obvious in a news conference on Friday –  which the media apparently doesn’t understand –  that he doubted Putin would outright admit to election meddling.

Trump said, “I don’t think you’ll have any, ‘Gee, I did it, you got me.'” Trump also stated the focus of the Russian election meddling was a means of thwarting a close relationship between himself and Mr. Putin.

A statement released by the Russian foreign ministry said the same thing. They said the indictment was released to ruin the atmosphere ahead of the talks.

Chuck Schumer, the Senator of New York, said that Mr. Trump should’ve canceled his meetings with the Russian leader. Schumer thinks building a relationship with Putin would be an “insult to Democracy.”

In a declassified January 2017 report, several intelligence agencies concluded that the Russian government aspired to ruin Hillary Clinton’s chances of winning.

However, the indictment claimed there weren’t any successful efforts at influencing election results. Rudolph W. Giuliani said in a Twitter post that the indictment showed that Trump and no other Americans had anything to do with it (2).

Supposedly, Mr. Roger J Stone Junior was one of the men who was speaking with Russian intelligence, but there isn’t any evidence that he realized he was communicating with Russians (2).

In April 2016, the Russian hackers began releasing documents of the Democratic National Convention that “wreaked havoc” on the Democratic Party, the New York Times reported (2).

Wikileaks was one of the organizations to corroborate with Russian hackers, exposing corrupt practices of the DNC (2).

Additionally, Russian hackers used the cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, as a means of paying for the hacking campaign. Most of the transactions were done through the online currency.

As Noam Chomsky said, the entire world is probably crying laughing right now, as the American media throws temper tantrums over the fact that the Russians involved themselves with the 2016 presidential election.

It appears the mainstream media, like always, is more focused on generating higher ratings and thus advertising dollars, through the creation of click-bait, misrepresentative, and half-truthful articles.

Sources

(1) New York Times

(2) New York Times 

(3) Newsweek 

(4) MediaPart