Last week, Donald Trump stood before a packed house in Montana and assured his faithful that we had nothing to fear from Russian President Vladimir Putin. "They’re going ‘Will President Trump be prepared, you know, President Putin is KGB and this and that,’" Trump mimicked. "You know what? Putin’s fine. He’s fine. We’re all fine. We’re people. Will I be prepared? Totally prepared. I’ve been preparing for this stuff my whole life."
Then earlier this week, on his way to depart for an overseas trip to meet with NATO allies and later Putin, Trump pondered how strange it was that his meeting with Putin would probably be the smoothest of them all.
"I have NATO. I have the UK, which is in somewhat turmoil. And I have Putin. Frankly, Putin may be the easiest of them all," Trump said Tuesday. "Who would think?"
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said during his Friday press conference that he briefed Trump about the indictments of 12 Russian military officials "earlier this week." That means Trump likely knew they were coming when he was selling the American people on what a gimme his bilateral Putin meeting would be.
But what's almost certainly true is that Trump knew about these indictments as he delivered a wrecking-ball performance at the NATO summit in Brussels then, upon arriving in England, proceeded to knife British Prime Minister Theresa May in the back as she struggles to hold her government together during precarious times.
Trump's performance has been nothing short of the work that someone would expect from an ally of Russia. In fact, the display was so glorious that Russian State TV featured pundits swooning over it earlier this week.
Not only is Trump not prepared to meet with a man who is so clearly his intellectual superior, U.S. citizens can't depend on Trump to protect U.S. national interests given the malice he's already exhibited this week.
Forget for a second about whether Trump's campaign conspired with Russian operatives to steal the 2016 election, Trump's actions just this week render him an untrustworthy steward of U.S. interests. He should immediately be called upon from all quarters to cancel his meeting with Putin. Nothing good can come from that meeting. Nothing. Especially if Trump spends so much as a second alone with Putin, as he is planning to do.
Those sentiments are now shared by a former GOP congressman from Florida as well as Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
And Schumer: “President Trump should cancel his meeting with Vladimir Putin until Russia takes demonstrable and transparent steps to prove that they won’t interfere in future elections.”
If current Republican lawmakers were even remotely concerned about U.S. national security, they would join this call to action.