Trump & Pompeo, Share a Joke With Putin Over U.S. Election Meddling

June 28, 2019 2:09 pm EDT Tiff Analysis Comments Off on Trump & Pompeo, Share a Joke With Putin Over U.S. Election Meddling
Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump meet at the 2017 G-20 Hamburg Summit. Photo by the Kremlin.

As mentioned in the Trump Tweets thread, President Donald Trump, while attending the G20 Summit in Japan, met with the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, in their first meeting since Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russian Investigation Report was made public.

During the photo-op, President Trump is asked if he is going to tell the Russian President not to meddle in future U.S. Elections.

He jokingly tells Putin not to meddle.

In this clip of the exchange the sound quality is poor, however, it shows that joining in on the laughter is Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

According to the Mueller Report, which is broken down into two volumes, the first covering the Russian Election interference, explains that “The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion.”

As the News Blender covers on Saturday and Sunday, with the Propaganda Watch series, which focuses on the Russian interference via Social Media websites, the Mueller Report, explains that was not the only way Russia attempted to help candidate Donald Trump, by swaying the election in his favor in 2016.

At the same time that the IRA operation began to focus on supporting candidate Trump in early 2016, the Russian government employed a second form of interference: cyber intrusions (hacking) and releases of hacked materials damaging to the Clinton Campaign. The Russian intelligence service known as the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Army (GRU) carried out these operations.

Mueller Report pg. 4. PDF pg. 12.

The GRU according to the report, “stole hundreds of thousands of documents from the DCCC and DNC. In mid-June the stolen materials were shared with the public through “fictitious online personas “DCLeaks” and “Guccifer 2.0.”” The GRU would later release additional materials through WikiLeaks.

This is not the first time that President Trump dismissed Russian Election interference.

During the first debate which was September 2016 between he and Hillary Clinton, he said, “I don’t think anyone knows it was Russia,” that hacked the DNC email server.

Mueller Report explains on pg. 1, PDF pg. 9 that, “Evidence of Russian government operations began to surface in mid-2016. In June, the Democratic National Committee and its cyber response team publicly announced that Russian hackers had compromised its computer network. Releases of hacked materials-hacks that public reporting soon attributed to the Russian government-began that same month. Additional releases followed in July through the organization WikiLeaks, with further releases in October and November.”

By the time of the first debate both candidates would have been receiving security briefings. Shortly after winning the nominations for their parties, the candidate’s were warned that Russia would try to infiltrate their campaigns as NBC News reported in December of 2017, both teams were asked to notify the FBI if such outreach should occur, the warning came in July of 2016.

By the first debate candidate Trump, would have also been made aware that his son, Donald Trump Jr., son-in-law Jared Kusher, campaign manager, Paul Manafort would have met in the now infamous Trump Tower meeting, in June 9th, 2016, in the hopes of obtaining dirt on Hillary Clinton from the Russian Government as “part of Russia and its government’s support of Mr. Trump.” (pg 6. PDF pg. 14).

As the News Blender reported after the two world leaders met in Helsinki, President Trump and Putin, held a joint-presser, during which President Trump was asked, who did he believe the U.S. Intelligence Community, that the Russian government hacked the DNC, or did he believe Putin, who says the Russian government did not meddle in the U.S. Election.

President Trump sided with Putin, saying in part, “I will say this I don’t see any reason why it would be…,” Russia.

Prior to President Trump leaving the U.S. for Japan, he is asked about his meeting with Putin, he tells the report, what the two leaders discuss, is “none of your business.”

For What It’s Worth.

How is Russian State Run media covering the laugh shared between Russia and the U.S., at the U.S.’s expense?

In order to keep this article under 1000 words, and trust me, there is tons more I could include in the article, just from Mueller’s Report, during the same presser with Putin from the G20 Summit, the two bounded over their disdain for Journalists.

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About Tiff 2556 Articles
Member of the Free Press who is politically homeless and a political junkie.