Of Godfathers and Presidents

By Olivia Pierson
[First published on Incite Politics 18/7/18]

“Your father did business with Hyman Roth. Your father respected Hyman Roth, but your father never trusted Hyman Roth,” said Frank Pentangeli in The Godfather.

Substitute the name Hyman Roth with Vladimir Putin and it might be a fair assessment of the kind of thinking that President Trump keeps in the forefront of his mind when dealing with this KGB operative and current President of the Russian Federation.

After this week’s summit between the two leaders, people seem to hold some kind of expectation that Trump should’ve lambasted Putin for everything under the sun, from civilian deaths in Aleppo, to the invasion of Crimea, to Russian meddling in the United States elections and beyond. I wager that had Trump conducted himself in that kind of fashion, the world would be hysterically screaming about his lack of professional diplomacy toward a first meeting with a leader who holds the major balance of nuclear weapons after America’s stockpile is accounted for.  

The point that seems to have provoked people into an all-out spiritual collapse is the fact that Trump isn’t taking his own intelligence agencies’ words about Russian meddling as gospel to berate Putin over the head with. Putin, of course, is vehemently denying knowledge about any meddling from the Russian side, but he offered Mueller’s investigation team access into Russia to be part of an investigation into the twelve people who have been indicted by the FBI from the safety, and irrelevance, of American soil.  If only the FBI had been as tenacious over Hillary Clinton’s emails and the DNC server, which still happens to be missing.

And who could blame Trump for ostensibly placing more stock in the word of Vladimir Putin rather than his own intelligence agencies, given that the intelligence agencies under President Obama, including the FBI, have been plotting his downfall since well before he even won the election? 

What’s particularly amusing is the great, virtuous display of outrage Chuck Schumer has shown today in a briefing: 

For the President of the United States to side with Putin against American law enforcement, American defence officials and American intelligence agencies is thoughtless, it’s dangerous and it’s weak.

Laughable when you consider that only last year Chuck Schumer ominously said this when Trump criticised the dealings of the intelligence agencies:

Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you… so even for a practical, supposedly hard nose businessman that’s really dumb to do this.
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Does anyone else smell a mafioso-like threat in that warning?

Let’s not forget that swamp-swimmer Schumer supports athletes in not standing for the American anthem and flag, he supports Democrat protestors crying out for the total dissolution of Immigration & Customs Enforcement and also lends his support to black protestors all over the country protesting the police!

The stench of double-dealing hypocrisy is overpowering. 

President Trump, to my eye and ear, obviously has bigger issues on the table like confronting Iran on behalf of his allegiance with Israel – and this is something he desires Putin’s backing on. I would say that this issue is the main one that sent him on a mission to Helsinki to get to know Putin in this remarkable first summit between two powerful men. ​
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If you enjoyed this article, please buy my book "Western Values Defended: A Primer" ​ 

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