Has trump texted or said as many negative things about Putin as he has our own allies?

Agreed but I believe several posters mentioned that Trump had never said anything negative about Putin and when gman pulled up some stuff then the position changed to “Yes but that wasn’t as bad as”. I’m not responding to gman as much as just calling out what I thought I saw.

Fair enough!

I’m waiting for him to announce when he’s going to impose tariffs on Russian steel. (crickets)

I am not sure you understand how Trump’s tariffs work. Trump’s tariffs apply to all steel and aluminum imports (Canada/EU had been exempted, but no longer). So he is already applying tariffs to Russian steel and aluminum, but it’s not a huge deal there.

From Reuters:

@Destarius – thank you for pointing out that the Putin goalposts were a little unfair there.

Though I think the original question is fair…has Trump said as many positive things about all our allies combined as he has Putin?

I can think of a dozen times he’s said complimentary things on Putin, I can only think of a half dozen things he’s said favorable of our allies (and some of those are a reach).

That’s scary in my mind, unless I’m missing a string of compliments to the other G6 that occurred in a brief time, lol.

gman1225, I appreciate your inputs here, especially since the post I’ve seen have been generally thoughtful and a good counterpoint to the general mindset here.

I’ve tried to argue the lack of desire for communication across partisan thinking only hurts all of us, and argued a few of my more conservative beliefs, but its been…ineffective I suspect. :)

Thanks a lot for your post. I agree that people learn by interacting with people who disagree with them, not by reacting with hostility or immaturity.

There’s an article called “The Roots of Russian Aggression” by James Kirchick in the National Review this week that explores why US-Russia relations are at such a low point, and its main argument is that Western countries never fully embraced their victory in the Cold War. It quotes a former US ambassador to the Ukraine as summarizing Russia’s attitude as “Nobody likes us – what’s wrong with everybody?” And in many ways – e.g. the “Russian reset” under Obama, letting Russia into the WTO and the G7/G8, the NATO-Russian Founding Act in 1997, and the establishment of the NATO-Russia Council in 2002 – the West has gone out of its way to encourage that perspective, without forcing Russia into the kind of self-reckoning and growth that nations usually do after a defeat on the scale of the Cold War. The author compares Germany’s transformation to Russia’s lack of improvement, and blames Western capitulation.

On that view, Trump’s behavior is mostly a continuation of Russia-friendly policies that have gone on for decades among Western countries. We can quibble about whether he should hold more press conferences basing Putin (although until now, I don’t think I’ve heard anyone actually clamoring for a pro forma statement by a politician), but the real problem here has been going on for a long time. And Trump needs to do far more than condemn Putin to make a change happen – and there’s a compelling argument the West missed its shot after the Cold War.

Yeah, that was until they started invading people and fucking with elections across the board.

And that was NOT the position of the Republican party. Until Trump won.

Remember Palin seeing Putin from her house? Remember Romney saying Russia was the biggest geopolitical rival out there?

Now after Romney was proven correct, oh NOW they’re our friends and we need to be besties with them.

Fuck that.

I don’t think Russia should be our friends. What I was advocating was a much harsher line, but I also acknowledged the reality that the ship may have sailed.

Russia was carrying out a scorched earth policy in Chechnya decades ago, literally blowing up apartment complexes. At the Munich Conference in 2007, Putin ripped into the US (calling us “monolithic” because we dared to interrupt the ethnic cleansing conducted by their allied Serbs in the Balkans), then carried out a cyberattack on Estonia, and invaded Georgia.

But yeah, fine, go ahead and believe Russia only became bad in the past year by making meme accounts to influence the 2016 election, long after Obama mocked Romney for calling them a major geopolitical threat. Historical revisionism is odious. We had a chance to stall Russia and force it into a reckoning after the Cold War, and we failed. They’re now an entrenched enemy, thanks to decades of US and Western policies, and no Trump press conference where he wags his finger at them is going to make that go away.

There’s some revisionism in what you say also, since you are ignoring the punishments that the US and EU have meted out to Russia (taking special aim at Putin and his cronies) for their bad behaviour. You seem to be pretending that the reset was like the status quo or something. The reset was an attempt to normalize relations with Russia with Putin hopefully out of the picture.

Sadly Putin’s influence and eventual return to the Presidency sent relations into a downward spiral once more.

Putin is still there, still doing bad shit, and no reason to believe he will stop either. Trump trying his best to reward him does look very suspicious.

Good, because they aren’t.

Absolutely right! Romney was totally correct, and minimizing the Russian threat was a huge mistake by Obama. In fairness, the country was focused on middle Eastern terrorism, but you are absolutely correct that Russia has been doing bad stuff for a long time! I think that if you dig back through these forums, you might find me defending Romney’s statements in that debate. Again, i was never an Obama voter.

But if you know this, then that makes it all the more offensive, that you recognize the threat posed by Russia, and still support Trump. That’s absolutely obscene to me. It’s treasonous, because it means you know they are the bad guys, and yet are looking away due to partisanship.

Like I said, I don’t think there’s anything realistically that can be done at this point. The best chance was when we won the Cold War, but so many opportunities were missed since then.

And again, I take issue with the assertion that “supporting Trump” means supporting his views on Russia, especially given that Trump’s rival, Hillary Clinton, literally handed Russians a mis-translated, idiotic ‘reset’ button on international television.

I am glad you defended Romney at the time, since not many people, including myself, really had the right response to that debate moment.

But Trump is bought and paid for by the Russians.

The reset was not a terrible idea given that Putin was theoretically out of power… based on the fact that Russia’s bad behaviour is mainly due to Putin, rewarding Russia with somewhat normalized relations when he is no longer in power is a good way to go.

What was misapprehended was the degree of control Putin retained even though he was no longer President.

That would be a pretty significant misapprehension, since everyone knew Medvedev (pronounced Med-ved-YEV!!!) was merely a seat-warmer and a complete Putin crony.

That was understood in a general sense, and yet Medvedev’s behaviour as President and policy decisions differed significantly from Putin’s until Putin started putting the clamps back on.

So I would say there was a window of opportunity for the Russian state to remove Putin’s influence, or at least a perceived window of opportunity, and the Obama admin was willing to take a chance on that. The reset did have quite a few side-benefits for the US as well.

The worst you can say is that it was a failed gamble with relatively low stakes.

It’s also moot, because the proper response to Obama being too weak on Russia isn’t to support the guy who is owned by the Russians.

And he wasn’t really “too weak” because when Russia backslid he ramped up sanctions and censure again, which is the appropriate course of action.

He’s a white nationalist by his own words, he doesn’t care as long as brown people are suffering.

I don’t understand what it means to be “owned by the Russians,” but regardless, if there is nothing to be gained on the issue from picking another candidate, I don’t see how it’s a relevant differentiating factor in determining who to vote for. To clarify, the term “support the guy” in my mind means I don’t want him to die and think he does some things well, which around here makes me a white nationalist.

Like I said ;)