Trump excludes US media from meeting with Russian ambassador - but Russian state news allowed in

[Miles Archer]

Trump excludes US media from meeting with Russian ambassador — but Russian state news allowed in



http://www.rawstory.com/2017/05/trump-excludes-us-media-from-meeting-with-russian-ambassador-but-russian-state-news-allowed-in/

One day after firing the man overseeing the FBI investigation into his presidential campaign’s ties to the Russian government, President Donald Trump spent Wednesday morning meeting with Russian government officials in the Oval Office.

However, no American media outlets were allowed to cover the event — and only photographers from Russia’s state-run media were allowed to snap photos, such as the one posted by the Russian embassy’s official Twitter account.

As the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler pointed out in response to the photo, “NO US press allowed in with meeting with (Trump) so we have to rely on images from Russian state media.”

Kislyak has been a central figure in the Trump administration’s ongoing scandal related to Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential election.

[Kittycow]

1. JFC

[democratisphere]

4. The US is being converted into a satellite nation of Russia.

Pravda never looked so good.

[Kittycow]

8. That's a good way to put it : satellite nation.

[calimary]

21. Fits. I've been saying that for awhile.

We're now no better than those places we used to call "Iron Curtain countries."

He's little more than Putin's puppet. This POTUS stands for "Puppet Of The United States."

He was installed in AMERICA'S White House by a hostile foreign power.

And the only vote that counted, last November, was Vlad's.

[Cosmocat]

17. right?

and ... republicans are perfectly the fuck fine with it.

[gratuitous]

2. You never let the enemy eavesdrop on your secret meetings

Gee whiz, people! What do you expect President Trump to do when he's getting a briefing from his superiors? Let everybody in on it? I think not.

[dalton99a]

12. Bingo.

[C_U_L8R]

3. Trump knows who's boss

and where his paycheck comes from.

[HAB911]

5. Traitors have no shame

[spanone]

6. trump answers to the kremlin....did they insist he fire comey?

[Tommy_Carcetti]

7. Optics? Optics? We have no optics here.

No sirree, no optics at all.

[Kittycow]

10. Only optics he cares about is his crowd size.

[Solly Mack]

9. Thank you, Daddy Putin. Look at me. I'm a big boy now!

[dalton99a]

11. +1

[GallopingGhost]

13. He's flaunting his authoritarian defiance

of our democratic republic, openly, brazenly.

Un-fucking-real.

[Cosmocat]

18. Here is the problem

the dipshits in this country don't care ...

Our 1/3 does, it burns our asses to no end.

But, their 1/3 are perfectly fine with it, and another 1/3 are just tuned out.

[GallopingGhost]

30. I agree, and if Donald

ever said one truthful thing in his entire life, it was when he said it doesn't matter what he does, his supporters are fine with it.

They're a lost cause, but the disinterested had better start caring, and fast.

[Cosmocat]

33. Yep

their 1/3 are gone, walking dead gone.

Their programed hatred of the evil liberal has sucked their souls dry.

Until they personally get screwed over in a big way, they are are a lost cause, and even then they likely will default to their programming.

It is the "middle" 1/3 that has to get into the game, the people who don't vote, or the mush heads to get half pulled into their shit with the "they are all the same" crap.

We beat ourselves up a lot over not getting out to vote or not doing enough.

IMO, we are doing about as much as we can, but can't even get the horse to the water, much less make it drink.

[GallopingGhost]

39. That's the truly sad, scary part.

You're right; even when his loyal devotees get screwed over bigly, whether it be healthcare, taxes, jobs, whatever, they will still go to their demise chanting his name.

The portion of our society who is content to remain uninvolved may not be willing to get involved until it is too late, if at all.

Frighteningly, I am reminded more and more these days of Churchill's quote.

"Still, if you will not fight when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worst case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves."

[Orrex]

34. Sadly true, but a blowjob was enough to bring the nation to its knees

As it were...

[JHB]

15. Well, to the Russian media, it's perfectly normal to see...

...someone getting their marching orders straight from the Kremlin.

[Achilleaze]

16. republican Comrade Casino mocks America & American democracy

and the GOP congress and senate cover for his treason.

ssssssssssssssssssssssssss

[PdxSean]

19. Not the Onion?

Well, personnel meetings generally are not open to the public. Trump must have done something really bad for his boss to fly in like this.

[calimary]

26. Yeah. He hasn't quashed the investigation.

He's supposed to make it go away. Get rid of all the evidence. Like he used to be able to do as a private corporation owner - with no board of directors or stockholders to cater to. Only family members. No wonder he went ahead and promised them the moon. He does that routinely with prospective clients (or, in his line of "work," prospective MARKS). Assured them he'd be in total control, because after all, that's how he rules his own little trump-branded fiefdom.

When you're in the private sector, and you own the joint, and you don't have anybody sharing power with you, and you are "lord and master" and your word is law, you can do the shit he's done for decades.

BUT THIS IS DIFFERENT.

This governmentin' stuff is DIFFERENT.

Watching Gloria Borger on CNN - saying trump obviously watched the Comey testimony last week and didn't like what he saw. Because THIS stuff is NOT what he's used to. THIS stuff does NOT work the same way as he's accustomed to it working in the private sector.

He's not used to this. Things in this world don't work the way things always reliably did in his old world.

In the private sector, when he owned the joint, and didn't have to go to any board of directors for permission to act, he could just fire somebody and that would be that. And they'd simply go away. And that would be that. Turn the page. Done.

BUT THIS IS DIFFERENT!

Again, this governmentin' stuff is DIFFERENT.

And if he's so damn smart (smarter than all the generals, last we all heard), why hasn't he caught on about this, by now?

[Still In Wisconsin]

20. How long before we scrap the F-15s and F-22s in favor of MiGs and Sukois?

I mean, if we're going to be a client state, may as well look like one.

[C Moon]

22. Holy frock!!!!!

He is completely abandoning America.
It's not only his greed and need to pay off debts, it's his ego: the Russian leaders love him, and he's loving it.

[calimary]

29. And this is Kislyak? OMG! Yeah, THAT guy.

Him again????

Sheee-it - he sure does keep turning up, doesn't he. That Kislyak certainly gets around, 'eh?

WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT SERGEY KISLYAK
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/03/02/what_we_know_about_sergey_kislyak_the_russian_diplomat_who_can_t_stop_meeting.html

Wednesday’s revelations that Attorney General Jeff Sessions met twice with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak last year, on top of the conversations with Kislyak that forced Trump’s national security adviser Michael Flynn to resign last month, have cast an increasingly bright spotlight on the once low-profile Russian diplomat.* While diplomatic colleagues like Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the late U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin seemed to relish international media attention, Kislyak kept his head down for much of his career. That being said, he’s been closely involved in U.S.-Russian relations for more than 35 years, including some of the most contentious and controversial moments of the post–Cold War era.
…
A friendlier relationship was on the horizon in 2016, when Kislyak sat in the front row at an invitation-only foreign-policy address by Donald Trump at Washington’s Mayflower Hotel, during which the candidate called for better relations with Moscow. Trump “made some intriguing points, but we need to understand what is meant in the implementation,” Kislyak told Politico after the speech. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner also met with Kislyak at Trump Tower during the transition.
Nothing in Kislyak’s biography jumps out as particularly suspicious or unusual for someone in his position, but it’s not unheard of for diplomats to have a side hustle in espionage. Could the quiet ambassador be involved in some clandestine activities? According to a CNN report on Thursday, Kislyak “is considered by US intelligence to be one of Russia's top spies and spy-recruiters in Washington.” The Kremlin denied that he has intelligence links. But this isn’t the first time someone has suggested he might not be entirely on the up and up. In 2014, after an off-the-record lunch with Kislyak, Breitbart national security editor Sebastian Gorka mused suggestively about “what kind of person—working for what kind of agency—was assigned to represent the USSR at the United Nations in the 1980s as he was.” Gorka is now a high-level national security adviser to President Trump.
At this point, we don’t know if Kislyak is an intelligence agent. We also don’t know much about what the ambassador discussed with either Flynn or Sessions. All we know is that, in any Venn diagram of this increasingly multifacetedTrump-Russia story, Kislyak should be pretty close to the center.

[PdxSean]

41. It ain't just Trump.

This is a Republican Party/Trump team effort.

[JawJaw]

23. "Heheheh - Catch Me If You Can!" n/t

[Hekate]

24. Kick

[Cryptoad]

25. The Coup is Complete,,,,,,,,

[ffr]

27. Got to hand it to this idiot, he has balls to openly welcome his Russian accomplices

right into our government. By next week, if he's not removed from office, I'd expect him to turn over the nuclear codes and tell the military to stand down.

[caballojm]

28. Comrade Drumpovich proving yet again that Putin is his daddy.

[tiptonic]

31. Russian

Is it time, to start teaching Russian in our schools, as a primary language?

[Honeycombe8]

32. He's proudly rubbing our country's nose in his unethical and possibly criminal behavior.

I've never seen such hubris in a president before.

[rdking647]

35. im begining to think the US military might have to remove trump

its pretty obvious he is a clear and present danger to the US
the GOP controlled house and senate refuse to do anything.

for teh sake of teh country it might be up to the military to remove trump and call new elections

[Moral Compass]

36. Not The Onion

I grew up during the Soviet years and remember the style of Pravda.

We mocked it and laughed at how obvious the distortion of the truth was.

Now we have this sort of thing where Trump is at war with the press and Kellyanne Conway is spewing out things that sound like they've been lifted from the pages of Pravda.

It isn't funny now.

Trump is conducting a coup. It is going to get worse.

[sinkingfeeling]

37. 45 getting his new instructions from Putin???

[ehrnst]

38. "This is nothing, just red baiting." - Glenn Greenwald in 3...2...1.. (nt)

[TheFrenchRazor]

40. i'm sure there's a legitimate reason... not! nt