Donald Trump Won’t Decry Russian Cyberattack Because He’s ‘Creepily Submissive’ To Vladimir Putin, Pundit Says
According to a pundit, Donald Trump failed to speak out against an alleged Russian cyberattack because he is “subservient” to Vladimir Putin — and has even shown to be unnaturally submissive to the world leader in the past.
Trump has come under criticism after failing to publicly speak out after reports of a widespread digital attack against the American government and private companies. The attack, announced this week by the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, had been reportedly taking place since March and is still ongoing, causing what experts have said is irreversible damage. Hackers reportedly used a vulnerability to target a number of key agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, the Pentagon, the U.S. Postal Service, and the National Institutes of Health.
Jonathan Chait of NYMag wrote that Trump’s close ties to Putin appear to have prevented him from speaking out. He noted that Trump has often failed to condemn Russian attacks, including the alleged poisoning of anti-corruption activists and Putin opponent Alexei Navalny.
“In the wake of news of Russia’s massive cyber-intrusion into a swath of private and public networks, including, alarmingly, agencies controlling the nuclear stockpile, the main lacuna of the story, as it has been for four years, is the president’s subservient relationship with Russia,” he wrote.
Chait went on to write that Trump has often deferred to Putin, showing at a summit in Helsinki that he is “creepily submissive” to his fellow world leader. At this meeting, Trump sparked widespread outrage when he appeared to side with Putin’s claim that Russia did not interfere in the 2016 presidential election, despite American intelligence agencies reaching the opposite conclusion.
Through it all, Trump has continued to see his counterpart as an ally despite the reported attacks, Chait claimed.
“Stopping Russian hackers may be hard, but it’s a lot harder if the president believes that they’re his friends,” he wrote.
The failure to speak out against the alleged cyberattack has drawn bipartisan pushback. This week, Utah Sen. Mitt Romney blasted what he called the “inexcusable silence and inaction from the White House” following the ongoing intrusion. In a tweet, Romney said that the incident showed a deep vulnerability to cyber warfare.
Critics have long accused Trump of being too close with Putin, especially after the country’s reported efforts in interfering in the 2016 election. As The Inquisitr noted, Trump has reportedly gone to great lengths to keep their discussions private, even taking notes from an interpreter who sat in on one of their meetings.
