Trump 2018 - Trump Foundation ordered to dissolve, Flynn Sentencing Delayed

[Demogorgon]

Ok.. so fair open floor Demogorgon... how do you feel about Trump bending over for Putin today?

I think all of this could have been avoided long before Trump if the US (and Europe) would have at least TRIED to work on things with Russia rather than decade after decade of the "Red Menace" enforced by crippling sanctions and embargoes and tariffs that have lead to Russia's struggling economy, which is one of the prime reasons they are such assholes to everyone around them. Russia was backed into a corner, and they compensated. Are they blameless? No. Are they guilty of staggering human rights abuses? Yes. Are they guilty of more underhanded destabilizing shit than i think anyone will ever know in this lifetime? Yes. Do i think it could have been avoided? YES. But this is all 20/20 hindsight and it's too late now, and most of the civilized world is having to deal with a growing, antagonistic power that they helped create. Remove Trump from the equation and the problem doesn't go away. Do i think we should give them a pass because of all of this? No. They should be held accountable for whatever they may have done behind the scenes, and if it all leads straight to Trump and his pals, fine, whatever. I'm not going to cry about it one bit. But the point is that if not Trump, it would be someone else. And someone else after that, and someone else after that. We can attack the point man all day, and it won't fix the underlying issue of our shitty relations with another world power.

[ekrekel]

....Remove Trump from the equation and the problem doesn't go away........ But the point is that if not Trump, it would be someone else. And someone else after that, and someone else after that. We can attack the point man all day, and it won't fix the underlying issue of our shitty relations with another world power.

Agreed that as long as there is a perceived or actual threat from Russia the President will be tasked with running the relationship in public settings. The problem I have with the "if not Trump, someone else" argument is it implies that Trump and "someone else" are equally as capable of handling the task. It's hard not to exaggerate here, but I think almost anyone could have handled the presser yesterday better. 3 years ago, 10 years ago, 30 years ago I'd be pretty comfortable saying almost all politicians, particularly the President, would have had a harder stance or at minimum a non-confrontational but very neutral stance toward our long time rival. Yesterday we saw, at best, our President defending Putin/Russia against US intelligence agencies.