Is Trump Bad News for Putin?
The American president has not proved quite the ally Moscow may have expected.
When it emerged that Donald Trump had had a second, unscheduled and unsupervised chat with Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, the media’s already-overstressed conspirometer dialed up to 11. But what if the real story now is less one of collusion with the Russians as collision with everyone else?
In his formal meeting with Putin, Trump was accompanied only by an interpreter and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson—not National Security Adviser , or experienced NSC Putin-watcher . For the unscripted “pull-aside” at a later dinner, he spent the best part of an hour with his Russian counterpart without even his own interpreter, only a Russian one. (Generally both sides have interpreters just to make certain meanings aren’t
