(Photo of Putin and Trump is by Evan Vucci (AP) at NBC News.)Here's what Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said after the Putin/Trump meeting:
“President Trump has said that he has heard earlier declarations from Mr. Putin that Russian leadership and Russian government has not interfered in the elections. And he accepts the things that Mr. Putin has said.”
And here's what U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said:
"There was not a lot of re-litigating of the past. I think both of the leaders feel like there's a lot of things in the past that both of us are unhappy about. We're unhappy, they're unhappy. What the two Presidents, I think rightly, focused on is how do we move forward. How do we move forward from here, because it’s not clear to me that we will ever come to some agreed-upon resolution of that question between the two nations."
Frankly, I don't trust what either Lavrov or Tillerson ever says, because the Putin administration and the Trump administration have both demonstrated a total disregard for the truth. But when both sides agree on what happened in the meeting, then we are probably getting something at least close to the truth. And that's how I read the two statements above.
Tillerson said Trump opened the meeting by "pressing" Putin on the issue of Russia hacking our election. He had to do that, even though he said just the day before that he still isn't sure it happened (or that it was the Russians who did it). If he hadn't, he would have been roundly criticized by members of both political parties. While Trump doesn't want to admit it happened, the Republicans and Democrats in Congress (and the American public) believes our intelligence agencies (who say it is a fact, and that it was directed by Putin himself).
If we are to believe Lavrov and Tillerson, then Trump did bring the subject up and Putin denied it. Then (whether Trump accepted it or not) they agreed to move on to other subjects and work toward developing a better relationship. That's is NOT adequate!
The hacking of our 2016 election by Russian hackers at the direction of Putin was nothing less than an attack on our country -- on the very basis of our democratic form of government. NOTHING is more important than that -- not Syria, not Ukraine, not North Korea, and not improving relations between Russia and the United States.
The hacking should have been the most important subject of that meeting, and until satisfaction was received on that subject (an apology and assurances that it would never happen again) no other subject should have even been discussed. How can anyone improve relations or have agreements with a government that has attacked the very foundations of our democracy?
Trump knuckled under to Putin on the most important issue there was to discuss. By refusing to stand up to Putin, he failed his country -- and he made the world a much more dangerous place (with a stronger Putin and a weaker American presidency).
