It is good to see Putin and Trump meet. Between our two countries, we have 90 percent of the world's nuclear weapons; it is best we get along. An isolated and angry Russia would not be good for the rest of the world.
Obama (or Hillary, had she won) would have gotten another Nobel Peace Prize for meeting with North Korea and Russia this soon into his presidency but, according to the press, Trump doing it is the worst thing to happen to international relations - ever.
Obama was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize just for showing up to work. Just weeks after invading Crimea, Putin was also nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Jimmy Carter and Al Gore, of course, both have one. Hitler was nominated for one in 1939 but didn't win. He blamed it on the Jews.
I'd like to have seen the faces of the Nobel Peace Prize judges when Putin didn't win and KGB officers asked for their names, addresses and brief descriptions of their cars.
As we know, Nobel prizes are only for Democrats. Reagan brought world peace without firing a shot by bringing down the Berlin Wall, and he didn't even get a Daytime Emmy. Joe Biden was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for helping Sino/American relations by having a nice conversation about China with the help at a New Jersey Panda Express.
Socialists and communists (aka the media) and their benefactors in the Democratic Party suddenly are Cold War warriors and are taking a hard line against Russia. They point to the corrupt KGB's bullying tactics in framing political opponents. Have they been watching Comey/Strzok/McCabe/Page/Orr/Rosenstein's FBI? We did the same thing under Obama.
NSA spy (which Obama officials Brennan and Clapper lied about) and whistle-blower Edward Snowden probably feels safer in Russia than in the United States. That's telling.
For two years, Putin played chess while Obama was playing checkers. It has been said that negotiating with Obama is like playing chess with pigeons. They fly in with great ceremony but won't make a move when it's their turn. Then they leave, come back and knock over all the pieces, mess on the chess board, and strut around like they won. Trump is different. He was in Helsinki to do a deal.
In my column, "Putin and Blaming Others," I explored Obama's feckless relationship with Putin. Putin just went in and took Crimea under Obama, whose only reaction was a sternly written U.N. letter. Putin's response to Obama: "Crimea river."
Russia caught Obama off guard. Before the invasion of Crimea, in Obama's mind, our nation's biggest threats were the Koch brothers, the tea party and health care providers. Obama famously laughed at Mitt Romney when he said: "Russia was our biggest geopolitical threat."
To be fair, Putin did allow Crimeans to vote to join Russia. The ballot only had an "Opt-in: Yes" block; there was no option to vote "No." Putin got the idea from the Facebook's "User Agreement."
We have issues with Putin. His human rights record is bad. He even purged gays from Russia, once saying Russia now has none. Then there were those tacky Russian warm-up suits their Olympians wore in the opening ceremony when Russia hosted the Olympics in Sochi. They looked like a gaudy 1980s disco design. I am just glad there were no gays there to see them.
So maybe Trump could have backed our intelligence agencies better against Putin. These are the same ones who told us there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (price tag - $2 trillion - in a worthless war) and went after Trump with the fake collusion investigation. So I get why he is careful.
One think tank says that the United States meddled in 89 elections (remember Obama getting involved in Israel's election to defeat Netanyahu?), and other countries meddled in 32 of ours.
If Mueller's investigation concludes anything, it will be that the DNC colluded to help Trump win by nominating Hillary Clinton.
Contact Ron Hart at Ron@RonaldHart.com.