Last updated on July 18th, 2023 at 11:25 am
Most casual observers this president have known for some time that he was doing Russia’s bidding – after all, Moscow helped elect him! – but Monday the floodgates opened.
It’s not just outraged Democrats who claim this president is playing for the wrong team. Republicans couldn’t believe their eyes either on Monday as Trump bowed to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
John McCain blasted the president’s press conference with Putin, calling it “one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory.”
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Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney called Trump’s performance alongside Putin “detrimental to our democratic principles.”
My statement on today’s summit in Helsinki. pic.twitter.com/WSxFGDKMau
— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) July 16, 2018
Hillary Clinton, the 2016 popular vote winner who warned us repeatedly about all of this, said in a tweet that it is no longer a question: Trump is firmly on the side of Russia.
Well, now we know. https://t.co/olQlhzQiuO
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) July 16, 2018
Former Vice President Joe Biden blasted Trump’s summit with Putin as “shameful” and a version of “appeasement.
Our president had the chance to confront an adversary who continues to attack our democracy & our allies. He didn’t. Instead he offered distractions, moral equivalence, & appeasement. This shameful performance doesn’t represent the US or what we stand for: https://t.co/tsc0lOV8b8
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) July 16, 2018
Left, right and center, the president is finally getting the condemnation that he has deserved since day one.
Even inside the White House, people aren’t too happy. As Jason Easley wrote a short time ago, Trump’s own staff is privately admitting that he looked weak standing next to Putin.
“Trump looked incredibly weak up there,” said one official, according to The Daily Beast. “Putin looks like a champion.”
On Twitter, the American people are fuming, too, after Trump sold out his own country on foreign soil next to an American enemy. At this hour, #ImpeachTrump is trending.
Trump is the weakest president the U.S. has ever had
While Donald Trump sells himself as an alpha male who won’t be pushed around or beholden to anybody, just the opposite is true.
For months, he has shown that – despite the American intelligence community assessment and the findings of the Senate Intelligence Committee, among other entities – he will do Russia’s bidding and won’t even acknowledge their attack on U.S. democracy.
As NBC’s Andrea Mitchell noted a short time ago, “For the first time in American history, a U.S. president sided with a Russian adversary over his own intelligence advisors, while at the same time spouting long-discredited conspiracy theories about the 2016 campaign.”
There have been a lot of dark days for the United States since Donald Trump took office. Monday was a particularly troubling one, and history will not soon forget it.
Lawmakers in both parties and American voters should remember it, too.
Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
