Really, Melania?
Last night we learned that Donald Trump had a secret meeting with Vladimir Putin during the G20 in Argentina that was even more closely guarded than their previous private meeting in Helsinki. Not only did Trump keep all of his most trusted political advisers out of the Argentina meeting, he didn’t allow the U.S. translator to participate this time. Instead, the only person Trump allowed to attend the meeting was his wife Melania. Wait, what?
This is weird even by the usual weird Trump-Putin standards. Why would Donald Trump decide that Melania was the only person he trusted enough to sit in on an otherwise deeply secret and obviously personal meeting with his puppet master Putin? For that matter, why would Putin be willing to have a conversation like that in front of Melania?
Donald Trump has proven to be a remarkably sloppy and incompetent Kremlin operative. He’s way too obvious about his allegiance to Putin. He doesn’t know how to even try to hide it. He’s also paranoid about the wrong things in general, which has led to various trusted advisers selling him out right under his nose. So it’s entirely plausible that Trump would go to great lengths to ensure that no one knew what went on during his latest meeting with Putin, and then brainlessly allowed Melania to sit in and hear it all.
Vladimir Putin, on the other hand, is not an idiot. We don’t know what the reason is, but there’s a darn good reason Putin was comfortable having a private conversation with his asset Donald Trump while Melania was sitting there next to him, and the American public deserves to know what that reason is. At the least, Melania is now a witness to a potential crime against the United States.
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report