Media Use Trump As Whipping Boy To Save Flailing Biden

The Media are terrified that because Biden appeased Putin by stopping sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, effectively giving him the green light to take over Ukraine without hurting his ability to supply Europe with energy, that he will become a one term president. This has kicked the campaign to shift the blame for the debacle onto Trump who hasn’t been president in over a year.

Damon Linker, writing for The Week, attempted to counter the fact that Putin didn’t invade Ukraine while Trump was President as evidence that, you guessed it, he was actually doing Putin’s bidding. He wrote, “wasn’t Trump Putin’s lapdog for the entirety of his presidency, famously refusing to say anything remotely critical about him and even siding with Putin’s denial of Russian interference in the 2016 election against evidence provided by America’s own intelligence services.”

When Reagan called the Soviet Union the ‘Evil Empire’ people like Linker claimed that he was about to start World War III. Now, according to Linker it was considered “famous” that President Trump refused to criticize Putin. It should be famous how fast the media has changed their view on President’s wanting to work for better relations with Russia. In 2009 the Obama administration wanted to have a reset of relations between our two nations that supposedly suffered under the Bush Administration. This was looked upon as smart diplomacy.

Fast forward a few years and President Obama told Russian President Medevyev that he would have more ‘flexibility’ after the 2012 election, to effectively be able to appease Putin without consequences the media was asleep at the wheel. When Mitt Romney told Obama during a debate, that Russia was our number one geopolitical foe who you shouldn’t be flexible with on important issues he was laughed at by the media.. They high fived over President Obama’s retort that “the 1980’s want their foreign policy back because the Cold War has been over for 20 years.”

Linker claims that President Trump sided with Putin over his own intelligence services on 2016 election interference. Linker would like to conflate two issues, one being Russian interference in our election and the other being Russian collusion with Trump’s campaign. President Trump’s denials of any collusion by him or his campaign with Russia is not the same thing. In fact we now know that there was no collusion and that the whole thing was a setup to stop Trump from being an effective president.

This rehashing of these disproved claims of President Trump being compromised by Putin allowed Linker to segue into the delusional idea that Putin hoped for Trump to dismantle NATO for him. He writes, “Trump expressed his desire on numerous occasions for the United States to withdraw from NATO altogether. He did so while campaigning for president in 2016. He did so as president. And apparently, he even made clear to advisors he hoped to make it a reality after he won re-election in 2020. Since such a withdrawal is Putin’s fondest wish, it makes far greater sense to suppose his relative restraint during the Trump presidency was a function of a reasonable expectation he might get everything he wanted without having to fire a shot.”

This entire idea makes no sense. Linker’s supporting evidence is based on hearsay from anonymous sources claiming Trump wanted to withdraw from NATO. One of the articles Linker uses to support the idea that Trump wanted out said that “Mr. Trump has not publicly threatened to leave it.” These sources clashed with the reality that Trump wanted NATO nations to take their own defense more seriously by contributing their fair share of 2% of GDP to Defense spending. This is a requirement of NATO membership that the majority of its members don’t meet.

Linker ends his piece by saying “Putin did not play nice guy from 2017 to 2020 because he was afraid of Donald Trump. He did so because he knew he had nothing to fear from the fanboy in the Oval Office.” An alternate reading of events could show that Putin is acting now because he knows from experience what to expect from Biden. He knows his foreign policy is a continuation of the Obama policy of appeasement and walking back of red lines. Waiting to act only gives NATO time to get stronger as their Trump induced defense spending increases kick in. But a scenario where Trump isn’t to blame means that the media has been wrong all along and that is something they cant admit.

Originally published at http://conservativecontrarian.wordpress.com on February 23, 2022.