On Fox News' Outnumbered, #OneLuckyGuy Ari Fleischer, the former Bush press secretary, said he's perplexed why Donald Trump refuses to confront President Putin after he has attacked our allies so publicly.
We are going into day four of the Treason Summit debacle.
After Trump just told CBS News that he really and truly did tell Putin to stop interfering in U.S. elections, something he must have forgotten about for 72 hours now, Outnumbered, co-host Harris Faulkner tried to soften the blow of his ineptitude.
Faulkner said, "You know Ari, the messaging component all of this for is tricky for the White House. It's day three now and the president has gotten on board everything that Democrats and other critics are saying he needs to say. What needs to happen next?"
Great framing there, Harris. Trump doesn't need to be honest, he just needs to say what his critics say he "needs to say." Sorry, Trump needed to be tough to Putin's face and not come home and flip-flop almost hourly just because everyone in the fact-based universe says he debased America and defended Russia on the international stage.
Ari Fleisher points this out.
Fleischer replied, "The worst messaging problems that linger for a long time means you have a substance problem first. And the substance problem here is that the president didn't handle Monday's news conference right from a substantive point of view. So now he has a communications problem that's lingered."
Ari continued, "I don't know why this has to be so hard. I don't know why President Trump would go have a news conference with President Putin and not simply say to Putin, on camera, don't mess with America's elections. That's what he should have done."
"He did it with Angela Merkel, he's done it with Theresa May, he's done it with our allies. he could have and should have done it with President Putin while still saying there's a lot we can work on. If only he had done that, everything would be so different. He should have." Fleischer said.
He certainly is tough on the ladies. Of course he should have, but he refuses. Why?
Fox Business and co-couch member Trish Regan replied, "It was a layup. it was easy. all Trump had to say 'I'm not going to allow it to happen. anybody that wants to mess with our elections, guess what we're going to you.'
She continued, "That was an easy question to answer. He missed that opportunity and now we're looking at the fallout."
No matter how many times Trump changes his story and Sarah Huckabee Sanders gets nasty with the media and tries to confuse the issue, they can never change the imagery and audio of Trump kowtowing to President Putin and defending Russia over the United States of America.
