Posted on 07/21/2018 8:25:07 AM PDT by yesthatjallen
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are worried that Russian President Vladimir Putin may use his one-on-one meeting with President Trump in Helsinki to drive a wedge between NATO allies by claiming secret side deals with the United States.
Congressional Republicans are urging the White House to get ahead of the Kremlin by defining what was and wasn’t agreed to. What was said between the two leaders, they admit, remains a disconcerting mystery.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) says he has “no idea” what Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov meant when he said Wednesday that Trump and Putin had entered into “important verbal agreements.”
Corker expressed concern about talk that the White House and Kremlin are “setting up a second meeting so they can begin implementation” of these mystery agreements.
Other Republicans pointed to the lack of transparency as problematic.
“I don’t know what happened privately, nobody does,” said Sen. Rob Portman (Ohio), adding that Trump needs to publicize whatever efforts he made to push back against Putin in their private meeting.
“It’s not enough just to raise it privately because everyone is watching, including our allies, including the people of Russia, including our intelligence agencies,” he said of any grievances Trump may have aired with Putin.
Members of Congress worry that Russia will use the Helsinki summit to undermine U.S. relations with NATO allies, especially with former East bloc and Soviet states that Putin views as within his country’s traditional sphere of influence.
Antonov said this week that Trump and Putin reached verbal agreements on two charged issues: Syria and arms control.
“The White House better get out in front of this before the Russians start characterizing this,” warned Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), a member of the Foreign Relations Committee and frequent Trump critic. “The Russians will use this.”
“There’s so little trust of this president, our president, among our allies,” he added.
U.S. security officials recognize that undermining NATO is one of Putin’s top foreign policy goals.
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford warned Congress last year that Russia “every day is undermining the credibility of our alliance commitment to NATO and our ability to respond to NATO.”
Republican lawmakers worry that Trump may be unwittingly advancing that strategy by criticizing allies sharply at a NATO summit in Brussels and then embracing Putin in Helsinki.
Flake noted that in a recent trip to Latvia he and his colleagues witnessed a concerted Russian propaganda campaign to convince Baltic states that “NATO is weak” and “America is an unreliable ally.”
Danielle Pletka, senior vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a center-right think tank, said that while Russia’s remarks about the outcome of an international summit wouldn’t normally be viewed as credible, Trump’s unorthodox style creates an atmosphere of uncertainty.
“In normal circumstances I would say that statements by Russia about their inferences about particular meetings are not especially credible or important or right or destabilizing,” she said. “The problem is because our president is himself so loosey-goosey about his leadership, about these meetings, about fundamentally everything that we can begin to worry.”
But agreements entered into solely by the president don’t carry a lot of weight, she said, pointing to former President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran that largely circumvented congressional approval.
“If the president has verbal discussions with anybody and no one else is there, no one can reasonably be expected to act on them,” she said.
Even so, congressional Republicans aren’t taking any chances about how the optics of the situation may affect bedrock international security arrangements.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) took the unusual step of telling European Union allies Tuesday that Republicans in Congress value NATO and view Russia as a hostile adversary.
“We believe the European Union countries are our friends and the Russians are not,” McConnell told reporters. “We understand the Russian threat.”
Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) warned on the Senate floor Thursday that the president and senior U.S. officials should be careful not to undermine Western alliances.
“Words matter. And what Americans say can bolster or shake confidence in the United States,” Moran said, adding that a recent trip to Russia, Norway and Finland left him “unconvinced that that Russia is prepared to change its behavior.”
Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, a center-left think tank, said concern that fallout from the summit could weaken U.S.-NATO relations "is warranted.”
But he said “it shouldn’t be blown out of proportion.”
NATO alliances don’t depend on the president alone, he noted.
“If, for example, Trump promised somehow to abandon an ally, first of all he really couldn’t if a treaty binds us to them, and second of all, the ally would presumably raise this issue with us the minute the Russians whispered some threat in their ear,” O’Hanlon said. “At that point, Trump would have the chance to deny or correct or repudiate whatever the Russians were saying.”
Nevertheless, longtime U.S. allies have been unsettled by Trump’s foreign policy stances, even before he met with Putin.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned in May that Trump’s decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear agreement “damages trust in the international order,” and that Europe could no longer rely on the United States to provide for its security.
“It is no longer such that the United States simply protects us, but Europe must take its destiny in its own hands,” she said.
Sen. Christopher Coons (Del.), a Democrat on the Foreign Relations panel, said “we shouldn’t be just guessing on the statements of the Russian ambassador” about what was agreed to at the summit.
Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) has demanded the U.S. government translator who attended the private Trump-Putin meeting be made available to testify before Congress.
He and other Democrats also want the White House to turn over contemporaneous notes from the summit.
In a letter to Trump this week, Democrats asked what “suggestions” Putin made to the president, whether the two leaders agreed to any changes in international security agreements and whether they made any commitments about the future presence of U.S. military forces in Syria, among other questions.
They also asked if the president discussed sanctions relief for Russia, NATO military exercises in the fall, U.S. security assistance to Ukraine or made any other commitments to Putin.
Republicans say they hope to learn details about what Trump discussed and may have agreed to when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo testifies before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday.
If questions remain after his appearance, Corker said he would consider asking for notes or testimony from the American translator who was present at the meeting with Putin.
But he cautioned it would be a last resort.
“It feels a little out of bounds,” Corker said. “I'm open to listening. I’d rather address it after the Pompeo hearing on Wednesday and see how transparent that ends up being.”
“I’m not going to say no, no, no,” he added. “If there’s no transparency, maybe we’ll revisit it.”
So far, Flake is the only Senate Republican to back Schumer’s call for the White House to turn over notes from the summit.
“I would hope that those notes — all interpreters take notes — would be turned over,” he said Thursday. “We need to know.
Where there’s flak...
“Conan, what is best in life?”
“To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women!”
Putin has all the evidence of high treason by the US Congress and Intelligence Agencies.
Of course their freaking out!
Obama tells Russia's Medvedev he'll have more flexibility after election
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nuclear-summit-obama-medvedev/obama-tells-russias-medvedev-more-flexibility-after-election-idUSBRE82P0JI20120326
Right now Moscow is driving the discussion. They said that the President was very open to having Russian officials question our people here in the U.S., and the White House has had to deny it. Russia is saying that the President supported the idea of a referendum to settle ownership of eastern Ukraine, and the White House has had to deny it. Unless the President gets his own version out there then he’s going to be denying and denying and denying.
I’ll have more leverage after the election. But you have to remember...Obama WAS President when he said this...and I believe the backdrop was dropping missile sites per Putin’s request.
:-)
But Reagan didn’t.
Just imagine if (it’s a big IF) Trump is able to
* denuke North Korea
* stabilize Syria enough that the rest of the middle east isn’t in constant threat/chaos
* cause changes in Iran (even seemingly minor changes)
* improve trade with countries all around the world
* Improve the situation in Israel (or even “fix” it)
If even a few major things happen
* SO MANY diplomats will be embarrassed (including congressmen who “play diplomat on TV” even though they aren’t diplomats)
* SO MANY ideas will be proven wrong
* Even the voters’ definition of “success” could change along with expectations. Politicians will no longer be able to claim “success” because they “tried”, or they “passed a resolution”, or they “sent people to talk with XYZ about issue ABC”.
Russia will play a part in most if not all of these. IF Trump succeeds in ANYTHING big, politicians MUST be part of it so they can claim credit. If they are not allowed to claim credit, the entire political atmosphere (their entire world) could be rattled. Re-election and may not be as easy (they may need to get things done between elections)
It could end up that Putin, Xi, and Kim are willing do make deals that help America more than what even Rs in congress are willing to do. With that ammunition for tweets and rallies, Trump may be able to run congress since they aren’t winning reelection if Trump says “Putin is better for America than Flake” and has results to back it up.
D politicians have the additional concern that if an R president succeeds in many major areas, their electoral vote advantage could disappear for decades. They’ll still have their liberal strongholds, but the additional votes to win could be a struggle. And they’ll have to give up the “Make America Mexico Again” and “Make America Venezuela Again” efforts to have any hope of taking back the white house.
The same idiots who don’t care that the DOJ is stonewalling Constitutional oversight by Congress.
Subpoena the taxes
Has anyone figured out that Trump might have wanted it to be private because anything that isn’t private gets immediately leaked to the press, and that the leaks often are not even true?
Media hysteria over Helsinki is fagging out, seen now as limp as a homo’s wrist.
Cooler heads are assessing the events. The bottom line is that Trump wins on all fronts:
<><>Foreign Policy,
<><>Counter Deep State,
<><>the Resistance, and,
<><> most importantly, the upcoming midterms.
The disgusting display of hyper-ventilation by his enemies ends with Advantage Trump.
Not hardly and definitely not to the Heartland GOP!
That’s why they’re leaving office, though not without lifetime taxpayers’ funded retirement accounts, free health insurance, etc.
Just as soon as they ask what Obama meant by saying he “will have more flexibility to act after the election”, then I’ll care about their curiosity here. But since that was 6 years ago, even if they do finally get curious, they will have established that one can wait 6 years to answer, and Trump will also be out of office by then... so, go do whatever. Idiots.
The same Republicans who never said a word when Obama and Clinton were secretly giving away the store in deals with Russia, Cuba, Iran, and China.
The only good news here is that Corker, Flake, and McCain will soon be gone. Hopefully one day will have 67% of the politicians be pro-American, unlike the 42% now (100% minus all Democrats and establishment Republicans = 42%).
They sure do sound pretty scared that Putin might have let the cat out of the bag and informed President Trump of the massive corruption in DC and that he has the Evidence to prove it. He will being it to the White House in the Fall.
If NATO “allies” are getting a little nervous, that’s a good thing. Maybe they’ll start taking some responsibility for their own defense.
Okay. According to our Constitution, the President, not the Congress, negotiates with foreign governments. The Constitution, however, gives Congress important responsibilities, including writing budgets. Unfortunately, Congress generally doesn’t write budgets but instead issues multi-trillion-dollar spending plans (well in excess of revenue) thousands of pages long in complete secrecy and passes them quickly in the dark of night at the last possible hour.
When will someone demand that the Congress open its legislative process enough that its own distinguished members have some clue about the contents of the legislation on which they vote? If Congress cannot open its legislative negotiations to its own members, then why should the President open sensitive, secret negotiations with foreign leaders to the scrutiny of Congress?
Why does Congress busy itself with all sorts of matters over which it lacks jurisdiction while it fails to attend to its own authority and jurisdiction?
This situation epitomizes why the people despise Congress so intensely. Congress needs to balance the federal budget and implement a plan to repay the federal debt. Then it can review and revise the entire catalog of federal statutory law, repealing whatever extends beyond federal jurisdiction or otherwise causes logical or logistical quandaries. Congress needs to avoid these publicity stunts over matters outside its jurisdiction until it completes its Constitutional tasks.
Funny how they believe Russia over the President of the United States but Trump shouldn’t believe them over the corrupt “Intel” community. BTW, why is Flake on the foreign relations committee? Seriously. Why?
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