During Saturday's interview with CBS Evening News, Trump appeared clueless when asked about the twelve Russians recently indicted by Robert Mueller's special counsel investigation.
Host Jeff Glor asked if Putin should be asked to send them back to the U.S. to face criminal charges.
Gor asked, "The Russians that were indicted, would you ask Putin to send them here?"
Trump replied, "I hadn't thought of that. But I certainly, I'll be asking about it."
Hadn't thought of it? Of course not. Trump's mind is squarely on Mueller's special counsel as it pertains to him only. Who cares about the integrity of democracy itself for this country?
Literally any other head of state in any other nation at any other time in history would not be so dismissive of a full on assault on the country by a hostile foreign entity. Minimally, they'd ask for those twelve indicted hackers to be remanded to the US to face charges. But that doesn't occur to Trump.
Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein briefed Trump before he left to go to the U.K. on these criminal charges before Rosenstein held Friday's press conference so Trump and his advisers have had plenty of time to formulate a strategy on how to deal with it if they were serious at all. Certainly, it would be a very good time to pull back from a meeting with no other participants.
But when it comes to Trump and Putin, his non-words of condemnation speak loudly, don't they?
Then Trump attacked the previous administration as if to wash his hands of it completely.
He said, "But again, this was during the Obama administration. They were doing whatever it was during the Obama administration."
Why does that matter, Donald? They did it to our country, which you are now constitutionally charged to protect. Your own DNI, Dan Coats, is screaming that the Russians are going to hack into the 2018 midterms.
Of course, he probably hasn't thought about that either. He's not up for re-election yet, is he?
Then he spouted off nonsense again about the RNC.
"And I heard that they were trying, or people were trying, to hack into the RNC too," the president continued. "The Republican National Committee. But we had much better defenses. I've been told that by a number of people. We had much better defenses, so they couldn't. I think the DNC should be ashamed of themselves for allowing themselves to be hacked. They had bad defenses and they were able to be hacked. But I heard they were trying to hack the Republicans too. But -- and this may be wrong -- but they had much stronger defenses."
Since the Senate Intel Committee just reported that Russia hacked and wanted Trump to win in 2016, why would they expose the RNC's dirty laundry to the public, eh?
With this meeting coming on the heels of the 2018 midterms, I can only wonder what these two leaders will talk about with nobody around to take notes?