Jul 16, 2018 2:41 PM

The Trump-Putin Press Conference Gave Russia Everything It Wanted

By refusing to acknowledge Russia's role in election interference, Trump has given it the green light to continue.

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Over the course of a roughly 45-minute press conference Monday, President Donald Trump stood beside Russian leader Vladimir Putin both physically and metaphorically. He repeatedly, pointedly declined to acknowledge that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, contrary to the assessment of every relevant US intelligence agency and a fistful of detailed indictments from special counsel Robert Mueller. Moreover, he seemed open to Putin’s suggestion that Russian intelligence assist in running down the evidence.

For Putin, an avowed judo enthusiast, Monday’s events must have come as a pleasant change of pace, less a grapple than a hug. “Between this and the World Cup, I don’t think Russia’s had a better foreign policy week since the defeat of Napoleon,” says Brandon Valeriano, an international conflict researcher at Marine Corps University.

But for the United States, Trump’s fealty to Putin’s version of events raises alarms. It comes just two days after Homeland Security chief Kirstjen Nielsen decried Russia’s 2015 assault. “Any attempt to interfere in our elections—successful or unsuccessful—is a direct attack on our democracy and is unacceptable,” Nielsen told a gathering of state election officials Saturday, noting also that Russian interference attempts remain ongoing.

Compare that to Trump. When asked directly if he would “denounce what happened in 2016, and warn [Putin] never to do it again," the US president first seemed to dabble in a garbled conspiracy theory about the Democratic National Committee server that had been hacked, before pivoting to a “gotta hear both sides” analysis.

“My people came to me, [Director of National Intelligence] Dan Coats came to me and some others, they said they think it’s Russia. I have President Putin, he just said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be,” Trump said. Then, after another detour into Hillary Clinton’s email server—which, according to Mueller's indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officers on Friday, Russian hackers attempted to infiltrate hours after then-candidate Trump literally asked them to at a 2016 press conference—he returned to the same note. “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 the people working on their case come work with their investigators with respect to the 12 people. I think that’s an incredible offer.”

Where even to begin? The world’s most capable arson investigators have informed Trump that someone burned down his house, and plans to do so again. Trump instead takes the word of the man with the gasoline and matches.

The idea, too, that Russia could help in the investigation of the Russian military intelligence officials implicated in Friday's indictment does seem incredible, but for its brazenness rather than its generosity. It has no logical core. It’s not an offer, it's an insult.

More disturbing, it’s a test, one that Trump appears to have failed multiple times. “Any specific material—if such things arise—we are ready to analyze together,” Putin said about the evidence in Mueller’s latest indictment. The Russian leader pushed repeatedly during the conference—and presumably during his two-hour private conversation with Trump—for collaborative cybersecurity efforts between the two countries. This is an idea Putin floated a year ago, as well, and Trump initially seemed to embrace, before being shouted back into his senses.

Offers of cooperation at this point amount to heckling, to sneering. They’re an end zone celebration. And instead of confronting them, Trump deferred, embraced, and encouraged. Even Trump’s prepared remarks let Putin frame the issue. “I addressed directly with President Putin the issue of Russian interference in our elections. I felt this was a message best delivered in person. Spent a great deal of time talking about it,” Trump said. “And President Putin may very well want to address it, and very strongly, because he feels very strongly about it, and he has an interesting idea.”

And just one more: When asked if he held Russia accountable for “anything in particular,” Trump replied, “Yes I do. I hold both countries responsible. I think that the United States has been foolish. I think we've all been foolish.” The pivot back to the US was immediate and absolute.

Within a few hours, Coats fired back, illustrating just how deep a rift exists between Trump and the US intelligence community. "We've been clear in our assessments of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and their ongoing, pervasive efforts to undermine our democracy, and we will continue to provide unvarnished and objective intelligence in support of our national security," he said in a statement. Other prominent figures were less reserved in their criticisms.

"Today's press conference in Helsinki was one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory," said Republican senator John McCain in a statement. "No prior president has ever abased himself more abjectly before a tyrant."

The roots of that abasement seemed on display as well. The implication that his election carries any sort of illegitimacy clearly exposes a nerve, to the point that Trump now conflates “Russian interference” with “Russian collusion,” and seems capable of willfully ignoring any amount of evidence about the former in order to dispute the latter. In perhaps the clearest glimpse at what the two world leaders might have discussed in private, Putin played this hand as well. “Could you name a single fact that would definitely prove the collusion,” the former KGB official asked. “This is utter nonsense, just like the president recently mentioned.”

Trump once claimed that he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” and not “lose any voters.” By shrugging off Russia’s efforts to subvert US democracy, he appears to grant Putin the same sort of impunity.

“Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the threshold of ‘high crimes & misdemeanors,’” wrote former CIA director John Brennan in a tweet Monday, in perhaps the strongest condemnation of the proceedings. “It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin.”

But whether Trump truly believes he owes Putin something or is simply thin-skinned about the validity of his election seems almost beside the point. The United States faces an ongoing threat from a foreign adversary that its leader refuses to recognize. That has consequences.

“How can we move forward if the principal target does not even seem to believe that they were the target in the first place? That’s a huge challenge for cyber responses, and how we think of cyber operations as they relate to foreign policy outcomes,” Valeriano says. “It’s just not clear where we go right now.”