New You Can't Trust

The headlines on March 21 told about how President Trump's security advisors had written "DO NOT CONGRATULATE PUTIN" across the top of his briefing but that the President congratulated Putin anyway. He was also instructed to admonish Putin about the poisoning of a Russian living in England.

The fact that Trump ignored this advice was painted as more evidence that Trump is soft on Putin and possibly owes his position to the Russian. When Trump fired his national security advisor a few days later, it was speculated that it was because the NSA had condemned Russia.

Things look very different a week later. While it is seldom mentioned, Trump's new pick for NSA, John Bolton, takes a harder line on Russia and it's clients (particularly Iran).

Trump also shut down a Russian embassy and expelled 60 diplomats.

What's more, we now know that the phone call between Trump and Putin was more than a simple congratulations. During the election campaign Putin had shown footage of a new missile system that can evade US anti-missile technology. The footage showed the missile striking Florida, about where Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort is. Trump pushed back against this cautioning, "If you want a new arms race, I'll give you one. And I'll win."

None of this sounds like the actions of someone who is soft on Putin or who Putin can blackmail.

We don't know if the original leak included the nature of the entire phone call or only the factoid that Trump ignored the "DO NOT CONGRATULATE" with the implication that Trump was encouraging Putin. Certainly the person who did the original leak knew the full contents of the call. So either important details were withheld by the leaker or by the press. Either way it was fake news - news that put an entirely different spin on the call than what actually occurred.

There are also reports that the only reason that Trump refuses to take a harder line on Putin is that he doesn't want to give the press the satisfaction of seeing him reverse a stance.

Regardless, this is just one more example of news that you can't trust.