July 16, 2018: Donald Trump Meets With His Master, Vladimir Putin

Left: A man who knows he's owned

by the man on the right.

July 16, 2018: A summit meeting is held at the Presidential Palace in Helsinki, Finland, between the President of the United States, Donald Trump, and the man who made sure he would get that job, and was now expecting something for it, the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin.

With Trump were Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, National Security Advisor John Bolton, White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, Kelly's Deputy Zachary Fuentes, U.S. Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman Jr., and Presidential Advisor Fiona Hill.

Among those with Putin was Foreign Affairs Minister Sergey Lavrov, whom Trump had met with in the Oval Office, along with Russia's Ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak, on May 10, 2017. That meeting had Russian reporters and photographers present, but no Americans were in the room, other than Trump himself. As of July 16, 2022, no one in America knows what was said, but it is suspected that Trump gave Lavrov and Kislyak classified information.

Trump and Putin met privately for 2 hours, without aides or note-takers, accompanied only by their respective interpreters. The private meeting was followed by a working lunch that included senior advisors. No agenda was published for their discussion, and no communique was issued afterward.

Jonathan Lemire of the Associated Press asked this of Trump: "Just now, President Putin denied having anything to do with the election interference in 2016. Every U.S. intelligence agency has concluded that Russia did. My first question for you sir is, who do you believe? My second question is would you now, with the whole world watching, tell President Putin, would you denounce what happened in 2016? And would you want him to never do it again?

Trump's response:

So, let me just say that we have two thoughts. You have groups that are wondering why the FBI never took the server. Why haven't they taken the server? Why was the FBI told to leave the office of the Democratic National Committee? I've been wondering that. I've been asking that for months and months, and I've been tweeting it out, and calling it out on social media. Where is the server? I want to know where is the server, and what is the server saying?

With that being said, all I can do is ask the question. My people came to me, Dan Coats came to me, and some others, they said they think it's Russia. I have President Putin. He just said it's not Russia.

I will say this: I don't see any reason why it would be. But I really do want to see the server, but I have, I have confidence in both parties.

I have great confidence in my intelligence people,, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today and what he did is an incredible offer. He offered to have the people working on the case come and work with their investigators, with respect to the 12 people. I think that's an incredible offer. Okay? Thank you.

(Dan Coats was then the Director of National Intelligence, and had previously served Indiana in both houses of Congress, and had been U.S. Ambassador to Germany.)

Jeff Mason, of Reuters, asked Putin whether he had wanted Donald Trump to win the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, and had he directed any of his officials to help him do that. Putin replied: "Yes, I did. Because he talked about bringing the U.S.-Russia relationship back to normal." Clearly, this was an admission to the 1st half of the question. Whether it was an admission to the 2nd half, an admission of interference in the election, was less clear.

Ever since, Trump has insisted that the evidence proves that there was no collusion between him and Russia, on anything. It does not prove the negative. It doesn't prove the affirmative, either, but there is plenty of evidence to suggest it. Had the evidence suggested implication of the Democrats, Trump would have argued words to the effect of, "Where there's smoke, there's fire."

Upon becoming President, Trump removed President Barack Obama's economic sanctions on Russia, and offered no opposition to anything Putin did. Someone, I forget who, asked a potent question: If Trump is not an active Russian asset, would he be acting any differently if he were one?

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July 16, 2018 was a Monday. The only major league sport in season at the time was baseball, which was in its All-Star Break. So there were no scores on this historic day.