Donald Trump returned from France on Monday night after attending the annual G7 summit meeting, held this year in Biarritz, France. But as he made his way back to Washington D.C., reports began to emerge that Trump spent much of the time in his private discussions with the other six world leaders pushing so hard for Russian President Vladimir Putin to be reinstated into the elite group that he created what a CNN report called “a sharp and sometimes bitter disagreement” with the other G7 members.
Trump repeated on multiple occasions his bizarre claim that Putin’s illegal 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine was somehow U.S. President Barack Obama’s fault, according to a report by The Washington Post , a view consistent with, as The Post reported, Trump’s “long-standing role as a Putin cheerleader and apologist.”
As The Inquisitr had previously reported, even before leaving for the summit, Trump began advocating for Putin’s reinstatement, asserting that Russia was expelled only because Putin “outsmarted” Obama.
Trump hammered on that false claim at the summit, accusing Obama of engineering Russia’s expulsion — a damaging blow to the autocratic state’s world legitimacy — not because of Putin’s outlaw invasion of Ukraine, but because Obama found Putin’s actions personally “embarrassing,” according to the Post account of Trump’s statements.
But why was Trump so adamant about pushing for Putin’s reinstatement, to the point where “Trump’s presence was tantamount to having Putin himself in the room,” according to a New York Magazine report? According to some experts, Trump’s strong advocacy for Putin serves as his payoff to Putin for Russia’s election interference in the 2016 presidential election.
That interference was designed specifically to help Trump win the election, according to findings by special counsel Robert Mueller, and published in The Mueller Report (posted online by The New York Times ).
No other G7 leader advocated for Putin’s reinstatement, but for Trump, bringing Russia back into the group would be “a quid pro quo to Putin, which allies see,” according to MSNBC political analyst Richard Stengel, via Twitter .
Political talk radio host David Rothkopf also saw Trump’s pro-Putin push as payment for Russia’s aid in getting Trump elected. Trump’s argument in favor of Putin goes “against all reason and unified opposition,” Rothkopf wrote on Twitter , adding that Trump’s push “is such an obvious quid pro quo” for Russia’s election help, “that Mueller should reopen his investigation, arrest and convict him.”
Seth Abramson, the author of the 2018 book Proof of Collusion , also wrote on Twitter that Trump’s passionate defense of Putin serves not only as payback for 2016 but as payment in advance for Russia’s clandestine aid to Trump in the 2020 presidential election as well.
The U.S. would receive “nothing” in return for Putin’s reinstatement, Abramson wrote in a later Twitter post. “The answer to what Trump would be getting is ‘illegal election aid in 2020,’ Abramson wrote. “We need to wake up .”