Scott Adams: Why Would Putin Meddle in Our Election?

Have you noticed how Michael Cohen stuff has pushed down the Helsinki news conference?

Why would Trump say: I don’t know why he wouldn’t?

Trump was putting his own ego lower than Putins.

Now we know that Trump doesn’t have any confidence problems.

Think of Trump’s statement as a hypnotist.

When he says “I don’t know why he would“, he’s getting to motivation.  It wasn’t intended to be factual, but persuasive.

Everyone who has evaluated it as a statement of fact, but it’s talking about Putin’s motivations, which he had just changed.

In the meeting, he had just made a big impact on Putin’s motivations.

There is a tit-for-tat-for-tit-for-tat forever.

If Trump removed his reasons and have him a virtual pardon.

Trump did the same thing with Kim Jong Il, he make a better offer.  He took the reason away.

CNN covered story of Putin offer to interview 12 indictments, but it was never plausible.

Trump Aides Did Damage Control on Air Force One After Putin Meeting

Trump told aides he wanted to come out with a new statement, and Bolton wrote up key points to make and passed them to White House aides

Flying home Monday after the summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, President Donald Trump and his senior aides recognized that he had made a mistake that risked lasting damage and needed to be fixed quickly, people familiar with the matter said.

Playing on a loop on television was footage of the president standing next to Mr. Putin, casting doubt on the U.S. intelligence community’s finding that Russia interfered in the 2016 election and aligning himself with Moscow’s denial of any meddling.

.. White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Mr. Trump wasn’t addressing the Russia question when he said “no.” Rather, he was saying “no” to answering further questions, Ms. Sanders said. But Mr. Trump did continue to answer questions.

 .. John Bolton, his national security adviser, wrote up a list of points that needed to be made quickly and passed them to White House aides, a person familiar with the matter said.
.. Bill Shine, the newly minted deputy chief of staff for communications and a former Fox News executive, voiced concern that the White House needed to provide a new TV image so that networks would stop broadcasting images of Mr. Trump’s news conference in Helsinki, a person familiar with the matter said.
.. Mr. Bolton and Vice President Mike Pence emphasized the importance of reassuring the intelligence community.

Trump and Putin vs. America

leads to only one conclusion: Donald Trump is either an asset of Russian intelligence or really enjoys playing one on TV.

.. There is overwhelming evidence that our president, for the first time in our history, is deliberately or through gross negligence or because of his own twisted personality engaged in treasonous behavior — behavior that violates his oath of office to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

.. Every single Republican lawmaker will be — and should be — asked on the election trail: Are you with Trump and Putin or are you with the C.I.A., F.B.I. and N.S.A.?

.. It started with the shocking tweet that Trump issued before he even sat down with Putin this morning: “Our relationship with Russia has NEVER been worse thanks to many years of U.S. foolishness and stupidity and now, the Rigged Witch Hunt!” The official Twitter account of the Russian foreign ministry — recognizing a useful idiot when it saw one — immediately “liked” Trump’s tweet and later added: “We agree.”

I’ll bet they do.

.. And in a bit of shocking moral equivalence, Trump added of the United States and Russia: “We are all to blame … both made some mistakes.” Trump said that it was actually the American probe into the Russian hacking that has “kept us apart.”

.. To watch an American president dis his own intelligence agencies, blame both sides for the Russian hacking of our election — and deliberately try to confuse the fact that there is still no solid proof of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia with the fact that Russia had its own interest in trying to defeat the anti-Putin Hillary Clinton — actually made me sick to my stomach.

.. I completely endorse the former C.I.A. director John O. Brennan’s tweet after the news conference:

“Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the threshold of ‘high crimes & misdemeanors.’ It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots: Where are you???”

.. the fact that he may not have colluded with the Russians doesn’t mean he does not, as president, have a responsibility to ensure that the Russians be punished for interfering in our last election on their own and be effectively deterred from doing so in the future. That is in his job description.

.. Listening to Trump, it was as if Franklin Roosevelt had announced after Pearl Harbor: “Hey, both sides are to blame. Our battleships in Hawaii were a little provocative to Japan — and, by the way, I had nothing to do with the causes for their attack. So cool it.”

.. In the past few years what has Putin done to deserve an American president sucking up to him for an “extraordinary” relationship?

  • Putin has seized Crimea,
  • covertly invaded Ukraine,
  • provided the missiles that shot down a civilian Malaysian airliner over Ukraine,
  • bombed tens of thousands of refugees out of Syria into Europe, destabilizing Europe,
  • been involved in the death of a British woman who accidentally handled a Russian nerve agent deployed to kill ex-Russian agents in England and
  • deployed misinformation to help tip the vote in Britain toward exiting and fracturing the European Union.

Most of all, Putin unleashed a cyberattack on America’s electoral process, aimed at both electing Trump — with or without Trump’s collusion — and sowing division among American citizens.