The Donald Trump-Vladimir Putin press conference was such a disaster for Trump that Trump sycophants from all over (i.e. CNSNews.com) had to go into damage control mode. Even Newsmax had to rush to defend Trump in the aftermath.
David Patten cranked out a piece hidden behind its “Platinum” paywall titled “Sanctions Galore! The 22 Times Trump Has Slapped Down Putin,” in which he insisted that Trump “already has been much tougher on the Russians than Barack Obama was during his entire presidency.”
Meanwhile, Newsmax chief and Trump buddy Christopher Ruddy made a TV appearance making the same point, effectively arguing that whatever Trump said during the presser doesn’t matter:
Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy said Sunday that President Donald Trump drew on his 50-year experience in business, where “words are not so much important as concrete actions,” in his summit with Vladimir Putin, and likely got “huge concessions” from the Russian leader.
In an interview on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” with Brian Stelter, Ruddy, a longtime friend of Trump, lamented the relentless criticism by the mainstream media of a president who is “new at his job.”
“I think the president made missteps, he admitted he misspoke,” Ruddy said of Trump’s controversial remarks about Russian meddling during a joint news conference with Putin. “But the idea I’ve heard on your program for the past 40 minutes, [columnist] Max Boot saying [Trump] was colluding in open daylight, he’s engaging in treason, this is beyond belief.”
Trump’s a “relatively new president” who for 50 years has “been a business guy.”
“As a business guy, words are not so much as important as the concrete actions of the deal,” Ruddy said. He added that although he didn’t speak to Trump about his one-on-one Putin meeting, “my guess is [Trump] got huge concessions, the meeting went better than anyone expected. He thought ‘I’m going to be overly nice to this guy.’”
Ruddy noted “we’ll see in the next coming months” if his guess is correct, but declared that Trump “didn’t want to go into meetings having a weak nuclear arsenal,” and before the summit, got NATO to increase military spending and has increased U.S. military spending.
“This is not a friend of Russia,” Ruddy said.
And when pressed why he seemed to talk like a friend, Ruddy explained it was because of his “negotiating style.”
“Go beyond the words and look at his concrete actions,” Ruddy said, asking: “Why would he put people like [Secretary of State] Mike Pompeo, [national security adviser] John Bolton, and [Defense Secretary] James Mattis, who are all Russia hawks, in key positions?”
Spoken like a true Trump believer.