John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, and Harry S. Truman and Josef Stalin, it is fair to say that the leaders of the United States and Russia (which was part of the Soviet Union during the time of these leaders) have always had somewhat of a tumultuous relationship. However, the current relationship between United States President Donald J Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin can be said to be the strangest of them all. This is because this relationship is characterised as being strangely close, but the two countries currently have quite a bad relationship.
All of this has been exemplified in the past week thanks to Trump’s actions in both the Helsinki summit with Putin, and its aftermath. The President of the United States was questioned during the summit about the current, ongoing allegations about the Russian hacking scandal in the 2016 US Presidential Election, which includes both the hacking scandal involving Wikileaks and Hillary Clinton’s emails, and their possible attempts at hacking voting machines on the actual election day. Trump answered the question with the following answer: ‘President Putin says it’s not Russia. I don’t see any reason why it would be.’ This statement sent shockwaves throughout the United States intelligence agencies, the US media and the rest of the world, and throughout all of this, President Vladimir Putin was smirking in the background.
Donald Trump’s response was idiotic, damaging to the credibility of his county’s own intelligence agencies and seemed to serve the interests of Russia much more than the interests of the United States. It seems to go actively against both the cybersecurity threat that Russia seems to pose against the US, as well as the nature of the relationship Vladimir Putin had with previous Presidents of the United States, which was one of mutual mistrust. This is the latest development in a long relationship between the two leaders that has been characterised by admiration from Trump, and a degree of manipulation from Putin, but the overall picture, involving talks of espionage, the escalation of tensions and the ever-present Mueller investigation show that the situation is a lot more complicated than first impressions may make it seem.
Following Trump’s remarks at the summit, he then came out and, rather begrudgingly, made a statement stating that he misspoke and actually meant to say the word ‘wouldn’t’ instead of the word ‘would’. Now, I don’t want to make allegations of lying, but looking at Trump’s past record with Russia and Putin, the seemingly forced manner he reads his statement in (looking rather like a petulant child after being disciplined by an adult) and the fact he also talked about the possibility of there being other actors at work in this very statement, I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions on Trump’s honesty.
Donald Trump’s last week is being called one of the worst of his Presidency, however to me this week has just been the perfect summary of Trump’s Presidency: Trump makes a comment seen as inflammatory and controversial, especially to the American intelligence agencies and media, and then is forced by high powered actors in the American political system to backtrack or apologise for the comments he has made. This kind of structure has defined the 45th President of the United States, and he doesn’t seem to care who it is he hurts or what international relationships he adversely affects with his ridiculously stupid rhetoric.
The above tweet shows Trump’s exact feelings towards perceptions of his and Vladimir Putin’s relationship, he believes that people simply have a vendetta against him, against Russia and do not want good relations between Russia and the United States. Trump, I hate to break this to you but people are not criticising you simply because of a vendetta, they are criticising you because you seem to simply not care about norms and customs around international relations, you have undermined your own intelligence agencies and have instead chosen to believe a foreign autocrat, that is if you yourself didn’t collude with him in the first place. You have shown yourself to be weak, unintelligent, apathetic towards the politics you are currently a part of and belligerent, you seem to care more about your own relationship with Vladimir Putin more than the security, in particular cybersecurity, of your country against one of its biggest threats.
Having said all this, do I think that this could be the beginning of the end for Trump’s Presidency? Unfortunately, not. I do not believe that Trump is simply haemorrhaging enough support for this blow to his credibility to be fatal, whilst it is true that this has caused some Republican and Conservative supporters to begin to question their support of Trump, this does not seem to be enough to end his Presidency, however should the Mueller investigation prove to be at all fruitful with delivering evidence against Trump, comments such as the ones he made in this past week will not look good for his defence, in fact they could easily help the prosecution push forward with impeachment proceedings. Therefore, it seems this narrative of possible collusion between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin/the Russian State will not be something that leaves the American political system anytime soon.
Left of the Tracks 
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