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Spin Cycle: Trump Met With Putin, So That Can’t Be Good. No, Seriously, We Can’t Let That Be Good

"There’s no sugar coating this — Donald Trump, once again, got played by Vladimir Putin," Senator Van Hollen said.

By  Virginia Kruta
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   DailyWire.com
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Spin Cycle: Trump Met With Putin, So That Can’t Be Good. No, Seriously, We Can’t Let That Be Good
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President Donald Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday — in the hopes of bringing about an eventual peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine after three years of war — and the media talking heads, apparently, are having none of it.

For those who don’t spend their Sunday mornings glued to the television — and their Sunday afternoons attempting to dig through a week’s worth of network and cable news media spin — The Daily Wire has compiled a short summary of what you may have missed.

Of course, just 48 hours after the much-touted meeting between Trump and Putin, the conversations across the Sunday political talk shows were focused on Russia — but rather than allow Trump an ounce of grace for bringing Putin to the table, they poked and prodded at the whole scenario, looking for fault wherever they could find it.

On ABC’s “This Week,” host Martha Raddatz attempted to put Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the defensive, asking him to respond to critics who claim he’d put Putin on the “world stage” by meeting him on the “red carpet” in Alaska.

Rubio pointed out the obvious — that Trump’s critics were always going to find something to complain about — and then argued that Putin, after waging war against Ukraine for three years, was already on the world stage.

Raddatz then asked Rubio what concessions Trump was able to get from Putin during their face-to-face meeting, prompting the Secretary of State to tell her abruptly that he would not be revealing any such concessions on her show.

“As much as everyone would love it to be a live, pay-per-view event, these discussions only work best when they are conducted privately in serious negotiations,” he said.

Jake Sullivan, who served as National Security Adviser under former President Joe Biden, claimed that Russia was using the negotiations in order to get land concessions that they could not obtain on the battlefield, and suggested that Trump was blind to Putin’s efforts to use him.

Putin, he told Raddatz, “is just trying to take us all for a ride, to keep this war going, keep attacking Ukraine without facing additional pressure.”

NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly claimed that Trump’s refusal to take questions could be taken as proof that the meeting was a failure, saying, “Donald Trump loves to take questions … When we saw Trump’s choosing to take no questions whatsoever, not even trying to claim a win, I think what was left unsaid was much more striking than what was said.”

Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) also spoke with Raddatz about the summit, and also claimed that Trump’s gamble had failed: “There’s no sugar coating this — Donald Trump, once again, got played by Vladimir Putin. Vladimir Putin got the red carpet treatment on American soil. But we got no ceasefire, no imminent meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy.”

On CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” the tone was very much the same. Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO) sat down with host Margaret Brennan, and he referred to the meeting as a “historic embarrassment.”

“Vladimir Putin does not care about the amount of time that we’re allocating, does not care about a B-2 bomber flyover, does not care about a lineup of F-22 fighters rolled out, he doesn’t care about any of that,” Crow claimed, arguing that Putin would only respond to more sanctions and military defeat.

Brennan also spoke with Fiona Hill, a Russia expert who notably testified against Trump in his first impeachment, who claimed that Trump had brought out the B2 stealth bombers not as a show of force but a show of deference to Putin.

The flyover, she said, “looked much more like a show of appreciation for Vladimir Putin” than a show meant to intimidate him.

On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” host Kristen Welker brought in Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT), who took much the same position as Crow and called the summit a “disaster” and an “embarrassment for the United States.”

Trump spent the day on Sunday alternately touting the success of the summit and lashing out at media for attempting to cast doubt on his efforts.

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