U.S. President Donald Trump incessantly refuses to admit that there is even the possibility that he or someone he likes did something wrong. Russian intelligence operatives were just indicted last week for hacking into Democratic Party-related computer systems, and yet still, to Trump, it’s all a “witch hunt.”
That’s what he shared in a Twitter meltdown he had while overseas waiting to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Finland.
In one of his tweets, he wrote:
‘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 Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs actually responded to that tweet with a simple, “We agree,” making it abundantly clear who Trump is aligning himself with in continuously undercutting the Russia investigation.
Also early Monday morning overseas, before the above tweet, Trump repeated attacks on Obama for supposedly not doing enough to stop Russian election meddling that to Trump may or may not actually be real, writing, in part:
‘President Obama thought that Crooked Hillary was going to win the election, so when he was informed by the FBI about Russian Meddling, he… did NOTHING about it. When I won it became a big deal and the Rigged Witch Hunt headed by Strzok!’
That’s just not true. The “witch hunt” — aka the Russia investigation — began before the election. President Obama did do something about it, privately confronting Putin himself over it and eventually, after the election, imposing tough sanctions that Trump’s own first national security adviser Michael Flynn sought to undercut. Former Vice President Joe Biden says that the White House wanted to issue a bipartisan statement condemning the interference pre-election, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) refused to sign on.
In other words, Republicans like Trump claiming Obama to have not done enough to combat Russian election meddling really doesn’t work. Trump has taken VERY few direct steps to counter the interference since taking office, with sanctions along those lines coming after significant delay.
Early Monday morning Helinski time, he also attempted to cast himself as the savior through this whole ordeal by pointing to him supposedly having gotten NATO countries to spend more on defense after all.
He was in attendance at a NATO summit in Brussels last week, and while there he pushed for member countries to spend at least 2 percent if not 4 percent of their annual GDPs on defense now. Member countries had previously agreed to spend at least 2 percent of their GDPs on spending in coming years; to Trump, though, the United States is presently doing too much for Europe. The connection he sees only goes as deep as the money, and the division he’s tried to sow in the wake of that idea and in connection.
Of NATO, he wrote:
‘Received many calls from leaders of NATO countries thanking me for helping to bring them together and to get them focused on financial obligations, both present & future. We had a truly great Summit that was inaccurately covered by much of the media. NATO is now strong & rich!’
Fittingly, the NATO secretary-general refused to confirm Trump’s claim that he got member nations to agree to more defense spending.
Check out Twitter’s response to Trump’s claims about Obama and the U.S. relationship with Russia below.
