Another Leftist Meltdown
The left and its media allies are having yet another meltdown over the president's comments at the Helsinki Summit. The left's outrage machine seems stuck in overdrive. Yesterday's press conference is being compared to "treason," "Pearl Harbor" and "Kristallnacht."
Remember all the hysteria over Trump pulling out of the Paris climate treaty?
Or when he called MS-13 gang members "animals"?
Or when he proposed his much-maligned "Muslim ban"?
How about the left's fits at moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem or pulling out of the Iranian nuclear deal?
Remember when the media were terrified about Trump getting us into a nuclear war with North Korea?
The president responded to the controversy this morning, tweeting:
"While I had a great meeting with NATO. . . I had an even better meeting with Vladimir Putin of Russia. Sadly, it is not being reported that way -- the Fake News is going Crazy!"
Later at the White House, the president acknowledged that after reading transcripts of the press conference, he did misspeak at one point. He meant to say that he saw no reason why it would not be Russia that interfered in the election.
Trump reiterated that he has the strongest respect for our intelligence agencies and that he accepted the conclusion that Russia did interfere in the 2016 election.
Just to repeat, Putin got nothing out of the summit. No sanctions on Russia have been lifted. We are not leaving Syria. The president just got our NATO allies to boost their defense spending.
As is so often the case, the left's hysteria totally misses the point. Some in the media are claiming Trump neglected to mention Crimea, Syria and Ukraine. (He did mention them.)
But what did the reporters ask about during the press conference? Of the seven questions posed by reporters to Presidents Trump and Putin, five were about election meddling and collusion.
The most important thing any president can do to counter Russia, and any other enemy, is to ensure we have a capable, robust military.
Obama cut military spending and did nothing as Putin seized Crimea and meddled in our elections. Moreover, these all "tough liberals" were willing to shut down the government and deny the military funding in order to push their open borders agenda.
Now they want us to believe they are credible hawks on Russia? I don't think so.
Media Myth Busting
Contrary to the media myths, President Trump did confront Vladimir Putin about Russia's election meddling. And he didn't suggest that the Russians did not meddle in the elections. In his opening statement, Trump said this:
"During today's meeting, I addressed directly with President Putin the issue of Russian interference in our elections. I felt this was a message best delivered in person. I spent a great deal of time talking about it and President Putin may very well want to address it . . . because he feels very strongly about it and he has an interesting idea."
In response to a question from an Associated Press reporter, the president said this:
"I have great confidence in my intelligence people but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today and what he did is an incredible offer. He offered to have [Robert Mueller's] people working on the case come and work with [Russian] investigators, with respect to the 12 [Russians indicted last week]. I think that's an incredible offer."
Netflix Crashes
After the stock market closed yesterday, Netflix reported the number of subscribers it signed up in the second quarter of the year. Its goal was 1.2 million new subscribers. Instead, it got only about half that number. As a result, the stock dropped 14% in after-market trading.
Stocks are hard to predict, and Netflix has gone up a lot in recent years. But I couldn't help but wonder if it fell short because all we have heard about the streaming video service lately is that it has signed such entertainment giants as Barack and Michelle Obama, and added Susan Rice to its board of directors.