Another day, another opportunity for people to see all this through their partisan lenses. On Tuesday, Putin gave Tillerson a dressing down when he showed up in Moscow for talks and ripped the U.S. for its missile attack on Syria. Yesterday Trump fired back:
President Trump declared Wednesday that U.S.-Russia relations “may be at an all-time low,” as he praised his top diplomat Rex Tillerson for working to address those tensions in Moscow – and left open whether ties between the two countries can be mended.
“Right now, we’re not getting along with Russia at all, we may be at an all-time low,” Trump said, during a White House press conference with Jens Stoltenberg, NATO's secretary-general.
Tillerson gave a similar assessment during a press conference with Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov, after meeting at the Kremlin with Vladimir Putin for nearly two hours Wednesday.
Tensions between the U.S. and Russia have flared since last week’s U.S. missile strikes against Syria’s Assad regime, Russia’s ally, in response to a chemical weapons attack. Trump stood by the decision on Wednesday, calling Bashar Assad a “butcher” and saying: “I have absolutely no doubt we did the right thing.”
Asked whether it's possible Syria could have launched the attack without Russia's knowledge, Trump gave a mixed answer, saying it's "possible" but "probably unlikely."
“I would like to think that they didn’t know, but certainly they could have, they were there,” he said.
Remember when Hillary had Lavrov stand there and push that stupid "reset button"? Of course you do. It was the Obama Administration's way of saying everything that had gone on between the Bush Administration and Russia was now being erased, and all would be wonderful and happy from that point forward. It's not hard to understand why Lavrov was laughing so hard in those photos. He was laughing at Obama and Hillary for their foolishness and naivete, thinking it would be this easy for the United States to simply make things right with Russia.
No, it doesn't work that way at all. Russia perceives its own strategic interests and they are counter to those of the United States. Obama found out the hard way that Russia plays hardball and doesn't care about reset buttons. His attempts to appease them by canceling missile defense systems in eastern Europe and doing nothing about the Russian incursion into Crimea only emboldened Putin and his fellow thugs.
Trump always said he would like to get along with Russia - a declaration that sent the media and the rest of the left into convulsions during the campaign - but his actions show he is not going to turn a blind eye to atrocities by Russia or its allies simply for the sake of detente.
A lot of people are freaking out today because Trump's statement comes off as undiplomatic. But Trump is Trump and this is what he does. He throws down rhetorical gauntlets that forward the process of upsetting the status quo, because he has a goal of changing it. Besides, it's nothing anyone can't already see. No, we are clearly not getting along very well with the Russians right now. That's because of events, not because diplomats are failing or because Trump is a madman. Putin isn't used to us standing up to him or to his puppets like Bashar Assad. Maybe Putin even believed the nonsense that Trump would be putty in his hands, and is now disappointed to learn that was never going to be the case.
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Of course, the left will continue with its fantasy that this is all a big con by Trump and Putin
The actions of Trump and Tillerson are designed to show Putin he can't keep propping up Assad without having to deal with serious complications for doing so. The West isn't simply going to sit back and say, Oh well, we don't like this but we can't ever stand up to the Russians. That was the Obama way of doing things, and Putin loved it - as of course he would. That's over. If Putin's in a snit and we're not getting along as a result, them's the breaks.
Of course, the left will continue with its fantasy that this is all a big con by Trump and Putin, who are just putting on a show to "distract from the Russia investigation" or whatever. Meanwhile, real world events are unfolding and it's a good thing someone prepared to deal with reality is in charge.
