Trump should have handled Putin differently… But…

Many suggested the mere meeting between Trump and Putin was treasonous. But, as the  Media Research Center’s Brent Bozell noticed a couple months ago, there’s a clear double standard when it comes to meeting with enemies and dictators. Under Obama, it was “historic diplomacy” but under Trump it’s written off as a “dangerous and disgusting sign of his lack of respect for human rights.”

I don’t know if Trump has a strategic reason for appearing to be soft on Putin with regard to election interference, but the outrage and hyperbole by media seem hypocritical considering how easily the media chose to write off Obama’s hot mic comments about missile defense to Medvedev as inconsequential.

CNN’s John King referred to it as a “candid chat” to which Erin Burnett responded that Obama “did obviously make a bit of a gaffe.” A bit of a gaffe? Jay Leno spoke of the incident on the Tonight Show with guest Mitt Romney and said, “That doesn’t seem that weird to me… That seems like politics as usual…”

Politics as usual? Could you imagine if anyone in the media described Trump’s performance in Helsinki as “politics as usual”? It’s alarming to consider how the media’s default position during the Obama years was to give him the benefit of the doubt, while Trump gets automatic antagonism. Trump’s position since the campaign was to improve relations with Russia, which is really no different from what the Obama administration tried and failed to do. Remember in 2009 when the Obama administration tried to “reset” relations with Russia, and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton presented Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov with red “reset” button as a symbol of the hope of improving Russian/U.S. relations? That really worked out well.

Still, the media fawned over Obama’s foreign policy despite numerous blunders, while Republicans were treated skeptically. When Mitt Romney called Russia America’s number one geopolitical foe during a debate with Barack Obama, Obama mocked, “the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back, because, the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.” And the media joined in with the mocking. Guess who was right?

Meanwhile, who remembers when a month ago, Obama’s former cyber-security coordinator revealed “that proposals he was developing to counter Russia’s attack on the U.S. presidential election were put on a ‘back burner’ after he was ordered to ‘stand down’ his efforts in the summer of 2016.” This should have been a huge story, but the media reserves its massive outrage coverage for Trump.

This is why Trump calls the media the “enemy of the people” — not because they are aggressively holding him accountable, but because they have a history of selectively holding leaders accountable based on partisan loyalties. Did you know that neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post (the nation’s two leading newspapers) has a single pro-Trump columnist? Do you really think that’s by accident?

After eight years of Obama throwing America under the bus with the approval of the media, Hollywood, and the Democratic Party, it strikes me as disingenuous for these institutions to be expressing outrage about Trump by calling him treasonous. For eight years I was never convinced that Obama was looking out for America’s interests. While often I don’t agree with Trump’s words, I have never doubted that he’s putting America first with his actions.

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