Expel and replace
Remember how last week, to the surprise of all, Trump joined the UK and other allies in expelling Russian diplomats?
He was just kidding. Russia can totally send new ones to replace the expellees.
State Department confirms that Russia can replace the diplomats, alleged to be intel officers, expelled last week.
US "is not requiring the Russian bilateral mission to reduce its total number of personnel" a spox says. New accreditation to be reviewed on a "case-by-case basis.”— Julian Borger (@julianborger) April 2, 2018
Julian Borger is the Guardian’s world affairs editor.
The Kremlin was boasting and laughing about this on Russian TV two days ago. Putin enjoys showing there’s no limit to the humiliation Trump will accept from him. Helps him rally his gang facing sanctions. https://t.co/iAdIg2b3i5
— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) April 2, 2018
Julian Borger in the Guardian yesterday:
The White House has confirmed that Donald Trump has raised with Vladimir Putin the possibility of a White House summit in the “not-too-distant” future.
The news of a White House invitation, first revealed by the Kremlin, came as the state department confirmed that Russia would be able to replace the diplomats the US expelled last week in response to the nerve agent attack in the UK. Both developments cast doubt on the effectiveness of what the US presented last week as a strong gesture of solidarity with the British government for the attack on the Russian ex-spy living in Salisbury, Sergei Skrypal and his daughter Yulia.
That’s a nice way of putting it. A blunt way of putting it would be that Trump was bullshitting us all last week.
A Putin aide, Yuri Ushakov, told Russian news agencies that Trump made the offer when he called Putin to congratulate him on his election win – a call that caused controversy because Trump’s critics argued that congratulations were inappropriate for elections that few saw as being free and fair, and because of Russian aggression in Ukraine and Syria as well as Moscow’s interference in western elections.
Oh that.
Asked about the invitation, the White House spokeswoman, Sarah Sanders, issued a statement saying: “As the President himself confirmed on 20 March, hours after his last call with President Putin, the two had discussed a bilateral meeting in the ‘not-too-distant future’ at a number of potential venues, including the White House. We have nothing further to add at this time.”
In other words: shut up, peasants. Question not our motives.
So, the famous deal-maker:
1 – Makes new enemies for the U.S.
2 – Loses old allies
3 – Makes existing enemies worse
4 – Improves the recruitment prospects of hostile terror organizations.
5 – Encourages domestic terror organizations
6 – Gets nothing out of Russia while failing to punish them for attacks.
What’s left is assuming that whatever he is getting from Russia is for him, not the U.S. – presumably the non-disclosure of blackmail material and/or cozy, hidden tangible rewards or promises thereof.
@#1 – did any of us ever doubt that any “deals” he made would be for the benefit of Trump or Junior Trumps? The only ones who seem to think Trump is going to make deals to benefit them are that small core of loyal voters who continue to insist he is the greatest thing since the Second Amendment. The rest of the Republican party is cynically using Trump as a cover for their own nasty shenanigans that benefit them at the expense of the rest of the country – the clown that comes out as cover while the magician saws the lady in half, so no one notices how he does it.