Turns out Vladimir Putin was behind Donald Trump’s Taliban stunt
Of all the stupid, anti-American, and self-inflicting things that Donald Trump has done since taking office, setting up a secret meeting with the Taliban at Camp David might be his worst yet. Now it turns out Trump apparently wasn’t merely trying out an incoherent last ditch plan of his own accord. Guess who’s taking credit for the whole debacle?
Just as Donald Trump was very publicly canceling the secret Taliban meeting last night, Russian news agency TASS announced that the Kremlin had been planning to play a key role in the Trump-Taliban meeting. In fact, the Kremlin claimed that both the United States and the Taliban had insisted that Russia attend the signing of whatever agreement might end up being reached at the meeting. So what does this tell us?
It’s clear that Vladimir Putin wanted the Trump-Taliban meeting to happen. This strongly suggests that Putin was the one making it happen. It’s far from clear as to how Putin could have gotten that message to Donald Trump, but their private meetings in recent months would have afforded Putin the opportunity to give Trump these long-term instructions. In turn, the only logical reason for Putin to want Trump to cut a deal with the Taliban would be if it resulted in the U.S. reducing its presence in the oil-rich region, so Russian could take a more dominant position.
In other words, it turns out this wasn’t merely a matter of Donald Trump meeting with terrorists at Camp David to try to negotiate some kind of misguided deal. Instead, it looks like this was a matter of Vladimir Putin instructing Trump to meet with the terrorists and surrender to them, for the benefit of Russia. This is so deep into treason territory, we’re not even sure where to start.
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report