Free Republic

President Trump blundered in his appearance with Putin, but his intuitions are nevertheless correct: a new Cold War with Russia would not end as happily as the real Cold War did. Donald Trump has the magic touch. After eighteen months in office, and eighteen more before that as the pre-eminent figure in American politics, Trump’s shock value might have worn off. The political establishment might have become inured to his heresies about cherished policies and sacred institutions, even to the point of learning to control its own response to his provocations. But hell no!—Trump can still do it. He...

LONDON (Reuters) - Sam Brownback, the U.S. Ambassador for International Religious Freedom, complained to the British ambassador in Washington D.C. about the treatment of an English right-wing activist who is in jail for disrupting a trial, according to three sources familiar with the discussion. Brownback raised the jailing of Robinson during a meeting with Darroch that covered a range of “religious freedom issues”, the British official confirmed earlier this week.

During a portion of an interview with CBS’ “Face the Nation” released on Thursday, former Secretary of State John Kerry criticized President Trump’s press conference with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki and stated he didn’t believe President Trump’s walk back of his comments, asking, “how can anyone buy walk back after walk back, when you take positions here, and then you take positions over here and you’re repetitively walking back and changing?” Kerry said he found the Helsinki presser “shocking. I found it to be one of the most disgraceful, remarkable moments of kowtowing to a foreign leader by an American...

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on Thursday that President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin shouldn't hold additional one-on-one meetings until the administration details what happened during Monday's Helsinki summit. “Until we know what happened at that two hour meeting in Helsinki, the president should have no more one-on-one interactions with Putin. In the United States, in Russia, or anywhere else," Schumer said in a statement. Talk of a second meeting comes days after the two leaders met one-on-one for two hours in Helsinki. Trump sparked widespread backlash during a press conference after the meeting by refusing to...

Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (Texas) blocked a resolution on Thursday that would have lent the Senate's support to the intelligence community's assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election, which was offered up in the wake of President Trump’s Monday meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Sens. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and Christopher Coons (D-Del.) tried to pass their resolution by unanimous consent, which requires the sign off of every senator. But Cornyn objected, saying senators should focus on passing new sanctions legislation and warning that they should work through the committee process. "It is purely a symbolic act...

President Donald Trump has been criticized by the media and by Beltway politicians of both parties for his meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Helsinki on Monday. But the summit has already produced a very significant win: namely, agreement to avoid a war in the Middle East by restraining Iran in Syria. As Breitbart News columnist Caroline Glick noted last month, it was crucial that Trump confront Putin over Syria, because Russia was about to allow Iranian and Hezbollah soldiers, dressed in Syrian uniforms, to move into southwestern Syria along the border with Israel and Jordan.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) says the only person whom he and others “actually know colluded with the Russians” is former Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Rand was on Fox News Wednesday morning clarifying his stance on Russia’s election meddling and the intelligence community. President Trump faced broad outrage over comments he made during the Helsinki, Finland, summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin Monday. Trump was criticized for not being more forceful with the Russian leader and for not backing up U.S. intelligence findings of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Trump clarified his comments in a short statement at...

Militaries of India and Pakistan will be part of a mega anti-terror drill in Russia next month which is being organised by the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) with an aim to expand cooperation among the member countries to deal with terrorism and extremism. It will be for the first time since Independence that India and Pakistan will both be part of a military exercise, though the armies of the two nations have worked together in UN peacekeeping missions. Around 200 Army and Air Force personnel from India will be participating in the exercise scheduled from August 20-29 at Chelyabinsk city...

During the recent NATO summit meeting, a rumbustious Donald Trump tore off a thin scab of niceties to reveal a deep and old NATO wound -- one that has predated Trump by nearly 30 years and goes back to the end of the Cold War. In an era when the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact are now ancient history, everyone praises NATO as "indispensable" and "essential" to Western solidarity and European security. But few feel any need to explain how and why that could still be so.

Once again, Donald Trump has raised questions about America’s commitment to NATO, this time in an interview with Fox News’s Tucker Carlson. Carlson asked a variation of the typical question about American military commitments overseas: Why send our kids to fight in obscure foreign lands? Membership in NATO obligates the members to defend any other member that’s attacked. So let’s say Montenegro, which joined last year, is attacked. Why should my son go to Montenegro to defend it from attack?

Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona lashed out at President Donald Trump on Wednesday for Trump's recent comments about NATO's collective defense obligations. In an interview with Fox News on Tuesday evening, in response to a question by host Tucker Carlson, Trump echoed Carlson's concerns about whether the U.S. should defend a small country like Montenegro if it were to come under attack. McCain, who is known to be hawkish on Russia, accused Trump of toeing the Kremlin line. “The people of #Montenegro boldly withstood pressure from #Putin’s Russia to embrace democracy. The Senate voted 97-2 supporting its accession to...

President Trump is expected to make remarks about "his recent trip to Helsinki" around 2pm, per Sarah Sanders

First, the very people who have been loudest in attacking President Trump about his performance at the Helsinki summit are the people who failed to protect America from Russian meddling in 2016. ..." Second, the Trump administration has been far tougher on Russia than President Obama ever dreamed of being. The Trump administration is taking real actions designed to weaken Russia and force Putin to change his aggressive behavior. The Trump administration has levied tough sanctions on Russia. Also, President Trump’s public lecture about Germany not buying natural gas from Russia was aimed at cutting Putin off from hard currency...

@realDonaldTrump While the NATO meeting in Brussels was an acknowledged triumph, with billions of dollars more being put up by member countries at a faster pace, the meeting with Russia may prove to be, in the long run, an even greater success. Many positive things will come out of that meeting.. 6:08 AM · Jul 18, 2018 ______ So many people at the higher ends of intelligence loved my press conference performance in Helsinki. Putin and I discussed many important subjects at our earlier meeting. We got along well which truly bothered many haters who wanted to see a boxing...

US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed Israel, Syria and Iran at their meeting in Helsinki on Monday and in subsequent comments to the press. The public comments provide some insight into their view of the future Middle East. With the Syrian regime conducting a major offensive in the south, the US deeply involved in eastern Syria and Israel demanding that the Iranians leave, these were central topics of concern. On Iran, Putin said the Iranian nuclear deal had helped ensure “the peaceful nature of its nuclear program.” Trump emphasized the need to pressure Iran and “stop...

At first, it was mostly just Chuck Schumer calling for hearings over what happened at the Trump – Putin summit. As Allahpundit noted last night, unless there are a lot of Republicans willing to go along with the idea (including key committee leaders) that’s not likely to happen. But now some additional Democrats are jumping on the dogpile and getting more specific than simply calling for “hearings.” Joe Kennedy and Jeanne Shaheen want to know what was discussed during the private, two-hour conversation between Presidents Trump and Putin. But if neither of the leaders are choosing to divulge that...

President Donald Trump’s press conference with Russia’s Vladimir Putin was a debacle. The president went from an anodyne prepared statement to a question-and-answer session that ping-ponged between stunning and appalling (with a bit of emetic thrown in for good measure). Suffice it to say, it was a new low from a chief executive who is redefining the term. But the reaction on Twitter from the foreign-policy establishment was almost as untethered as Trump himself. John Brennan, who served as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency under Obama, tweeted: Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds...

There is no way that POTUS, Trump could have made the alleged mistake at the Helsinki Press Conference with President Putin of the Russian Federation. What he has done, is to setup his Democrat & Media buffoons for a major political fall, with information passed onto to him by Vladmir Putin. Of course the Democrats and their lock-step media fell for it 100%. Today, Trump reworded his delivery from yesterday to a more favorable position for him. But, there is more to come. I believe, although I have no proof whatsoever, that Putin has fed Trump "Dynamite Facts" that lead...

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki: "I look at the latest developments, including Helsinki, where it might have been that one president of our neighboring country (Putin) was pressuring the U.S. president for concessions. But I have not seen any concessions, neither as regards the annexation of Crimea nor the war in Ukraine," Morawiecki said. "None of the voices that were appearing beforehand as hypothetically possible - concessions by the United States - have materialized. So I don't see where he (Trump) has made any significant concessions. Poland is the biggest former communist country in both the European Union and NATO,...

Theresa May has defended Donald Trump’s approach to last week’s Nato summit, claiming it made all the difference in encouraging European allies to “step up” their defence spending. The US president left the Brussels talks in disarray after setting a January deadline for other alliance members to increase defence spending and hinting that the US may quit Nato if they failed to do so. For the second year in a row, Trump caused turmoil at a Nato summit, criticising the Germans, turning up late for a meeting, ignoring the issues on the table and securing an emergency discussion on spending....