During G20 Summit there was a second, hour long meeting, between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin that nobody had heard about.

Courtesy of the New York Times: 

Hours into a dinner with world leaders who had gathered for the Group of 20 summit meeting, President Trump left his chair at the sprawling banquet table and headed to where President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was seated. 

The two presidents had met earlier in the day for the first time and, as the White House put it, had developed a rapport even as they talked about Russia’s interference in the United States’ 2016 elections. 

The July 7 meeting in Hamburg, Germany, was the single most scrutinized of the Trump presidency. But it turned out there was another encounter: a one-on-one discussion over dinner that lasted as long as an hour and relied solely on a Kremlin-provided interpreter. 

No presidential relationship has been more dissected than the one between Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin, a dynamic only heightened by the swirl of investigations into whether Mr. Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia to sway the election in his favor. Nevertheless, the meeting was confirmed by the White House only on Tuesday, after reports surfaced that some of the guests had been surprised that it occurred. 

The dinner discussion caught the attention of other leaders around the table, some of whom later remarked privately on the odd spectacle of an American president seeming to single out the Russian leader for special attention at a summit meeting that included some of the United States’ staunchest, oldest allies.

What was significant about this impromptu meeting, that TRUMP clearly sought out, is that it was not reported by the White House, Trump had no similar interactions with other world leaders, and no American official was involved.

Oh, and it was also weird: 

“Pretty much everyone at the dinner thought this was really weird, that here is the president of the United States, who clearly wants to display that he has a better relationship personally with President Putin than any of us, or simply doesn’t care,” said Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group, a New York-based research and consulting firm, who said he had heard directly from attendees. “They were flummoxed, they were confused and they were startled.”

We also know that the reporting of this made Trump very defensive. 

Fake News story of secret dinner with Putin is "sick." All G 20 leaders, and spouses, were invited by the Chancellor of Germany. Press knew!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 19, 2017

Pretty sure it the press knew, WE would have known much sooner.

The Fake News is becoming more and more dishonest! Even a dinner arranged for top 20 leaders in Germany is made to look sinister!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 19, 2017

I am not sure what is "fake news" about this since the White House has confirmed that it did indeed happen.

You know for a meeting that was supposedly no big deal, this seems to have really triggered Orange Hitler. 

And finally leave it to an Australian journalist to perfectly sum up Trump's trip to the G20 Summit. Update!

What did we learn about @realDonaldTrump at this #G20? @CUhlmann explains. #Insiders pic.twitter.com/TGOXdiFWhB

— Insiders ABC (@InsidersABC) July 8, 2017

I wish that OUR journalists would be as frank when discussing Donald Trump's bullshit.

Update: Here is the transcript.

What we already knew is that the President of the United States has a particular skill set, that he's identified an illness in Western democracies, but he has no cure for it and seems intent on exploiting it – and we've also learned that he has no desire and no capacity to lead the world. 

The G20 became the G19 as it ended. On the Paris climate accords, the US was left isolated and friendless. But given that was always going to happen, a deft president would have found an issue which he could rally most of the leaders. And he had the perfect one – North Korea's missile tests. So where was the G20 statement condemning North Korea which would have put pressure on China and Russia? Other leaders expected it. They were prepared to back it, but it never came. 

There's a tendency among some hopeful souls to confuse the speeches written for Trump with the thoughts of the man himself – he did make some interesting, scripted observations in Poland about defending the values of the West. And he's in a unique position. He's the one man who has something to do something about it. But it's the unscripted Trump that's real: a man who barks out vile in a 140 characters, who wastes his precious days as president at war with the West institutions like the judiciary, independent agencies and the free press. He was an uneasy, lonely, awkward figure at this gathering and you got the strong sense some of the leaders are trying to find the best way to work around him. 

Donald Trump's a man that craves power because it burnishes his celebrity. To be constantly talking and talked about is all that really matters and there is no value placed on the meaning of words, so what's said one day can be discarded the next. 

So what did we learn? We learn that Donald Trump has pressed fast forward on the decline of the United States as a global leader. He managed to isolate his nation, to confuse and alienate his allies and to diminish America – he will cede that power to China and Russia. Two authoritarian states that will forge a very different set of rules for the 21st century. Some will cheer the decline of America. But I think we'll miss it when it's gone. And that's the biggest threat to the values of the West which he claims to hold so dear.

As they say in Australia, good on ya Mate. 

This picture pretty much sums up Trump's visit to the G20 Summit.

Courtesy of CNN: 

World leaders at the G20 summit in Germany went into their final day of talks Saturday scratching their heads over what to do about a increasingly isolationist United States. 

Leaders appeared to be at an impasse over trade and climate change, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel making clear that the US' stance on the key issues were threatening to derail progress and that talks had been difficult. 

US President Donald Trump won the 2016 election on an "America First" platform that would pull the United States out of several multilateral trade deals and negotiations, as well as the landmark Paris Agreement on climate change.

Merkel illustrated an everyone-versus-the-US scenario late Friday, and said leaders were considering how they could now present these markedly different stances in one communique.

Isolated, alone, hated by the majority of the American people, and even more of the Europeans. 

If it were not for his bestie Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump would seem a tragic figure.

But then you just have to remember that this is something that he is doing to himself, as well as to our country, and any feelings of sympathy simply die on the vine.

Angela Merkel finally got that handshake photo with Trump. Not sure it was worth it.

AWKWARD!

So this is the photo making the rounds from Trump's meeting with Merkel today.

I am not sure why they both appear surprised. (Maybe Trump thought he was grabbing something else.)

You can see in this video that Merkel had to work several moments to get Trump to take her hand.

As it turns out this is a meeting that almost did not happen due to a completely dysfunction White House.

Courtesy of Buzzfeed: 

White House officials apparently waited too long to book accommodations for President Trump, leaving him without a hotel in Hamburg, Germany, as world leaders converge for the G20 summit. 

Organizers announced the scheduled summit in February 2016, which requires 9,000 hotel rooms to accommodate world leaders, their sizable staffs, and security details. 

The Hamburger Abendblatt, a local news outlet, reported that the US government wanted to accommodate Trump in the Four Seasons, but it was already booked. In fact, it turns out that every luxury hotel in Hamburg was reportedly booked by the time the Americans called, leaving Trump, who is associated with an empire of hotel properties, scrambling for a place to stay. 

Several weeks ago there were even rumors Trump might have to sleep in Berlin and have to fly to Hamburg via helicopter.

Apparently Trump will be bunking over at the US Consulate General in Hamburg.

Tomorrow Trump will be kissing Putin's ass, so he needs to be well rested.

Donald Trump is preparing for his meeting with Vladimir Putin by reading "tweet length talking points."

I know I've used this image before, but come on it's so perfect.

Courtesy of Vox: 

US intelligence officials are trying to prepare President Trump for his high-stakes meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin Friday by feeding him information the only way they know how: in bite-size 140-character pieces. 

It’s a well-reported fact that Trump doesn’t read his daily briefings and prefers “killer graphics” like pictures, videos, and charts, or in-person briefings. Trump aides have come up with some creative ways to keep the president focused — such as mentioning his name as frequently as possible in memos — but this latest strategy might be their most desperate one yet. 

According to a report from the Los Angeles Times, Trump aides have prepared “a list of tweet-length sentences that summarize the main points Trump could bring up with Putin” in the hopes that the president absorbs even a little of what he needs to know before sitting down with the canny, and sure to be well-prepared, Russian leader.

So we are sending a mental midget into a meeting with a former Soviet spy who was the master mind behind the hacking of our last election.

Perhaps we ought to just douse Trump in steak sauce as well.

What's more apparently Trump is planning to wing it.

Last week, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster said the Trump administration doesn’t have a clear plan for the meeting with Putin. 

“We have no specific agenda,” he said. “It’s whatever the president wants to talk about.”

On the other hand there is no question that Putin will be quite well prepared for this meeting with a list of "suggestions" that Trump can mull over to help build a friendship between Russia and the United States.

And trust that none of those "suggestions" will favor America in any way.

Former spies are convinced that Putin will have little trouble manipulating Trump due to his massive and delicate ego.

The Kremlin has already taken advantage of Trump's refusal to confirm that it was Russia that hacked our last election.

I imagine that Putin is salivating at the prospect of making America's commander-in-chief his bitch for the first time in Russian history.

Germany and China to join forces and take on the role traditionally filled by the United States, now that there is a lunatic in charge of that country.

It's up to us now.

Courtesy of Bloomberg: 

The U.S. traditionally takes point in the search for common approaches to the big global issues of the day at G-20 summits. Not this time. 

When world leaders meet in Hamburg on Friday, China and Germany will move in to usurp the U.S.’s role.

The two industrial powerhouses of Asia and Europe are being nudged into an informal alliance to pick up the leadership baton that the U.S. is accused of having dropped since President Donald Trump’s inauguration earlier this year, according to diplomats and officials from several Group of 20 members. 

The situation has crystallized ahead of this year’s annual G-20 meeting, which will be held in Germany’s busiest commercial port. That’s in part because, for the first time since the group’s founding, the U.S. will be represented by a president who embraces protectionism, abandoning decades of American cheer-leading for free trade.

Boy color me confused.

What part of Make America Great Again is played by having German and China usurp America's role as the leader of the free world?

And while this is going on Trump will be backstage playing footsies with Putin and getting instructions on how best to damage America next.

Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin to hold bilateral meeting during G20 Summit.

Courtesy of CNN: 

President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will sit down for an official bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Hamburg on Friday rather than an informal pull-aside meeting. 

The meeting, confirmed by both the White House and the Kremlin on Tuesday, will be the first in-person meeting between the two leaders and the first official bilateral meeting between a US and Russian president in nearly two years. 

The meeting comes amid ongoing tensions between the two countries stemming from Russia's efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election, its annexation of Ukrainian territory and its support of the Syrian regime. 

"It is planned as a fully-fledged, 'seated' meeting," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday, according to the state-run TASS news agency. 

National Security Council spokesman Michael Anton also confirmed that the two leaders will sit down together Friday for a bilateral meeting. 

The format remained an open question through this weekend. Homeland security adviser Thomas Bossert said Sunday on ABC's "This Week" that the parameters of the meeting had not yet "been set."

There are lots of pundits weighing in on this and suggesting that Trump needs to bring up the Russian interference in the 2016 election or else he will be forever Putin's poodle.

But I am convinced that Trump is already Putin's poodle and that the topic will never come up.

Let's face it Putin would never admit anything, but then again Trump does not want him to admit anything.

Trump is terrified that his election victory will be made illegitimate, and the first step toward doing that would be for Putin to admit that he helped him to win.

It serves neither one to even broach the topic, and so they will talk about other things instead, and don't think that THOSE topics will be in any way controversial either.  

Speaking of Russia, the White House has confirmed that the Trump/Putin meeting is a go.

Courtesy of NBC News:  

President Donald Trump will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin next week at the G20 summit, the White House confirmed Thursday. 

Trump's highly-anticipated first meeting with his Russian counterpart will come on the sidelines of the summit in Hamburg, Germany, National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster told reporters in an off-camera briefing. McMaster, joined by National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn, declined to offer any further details on what might be discussed and dodged questions about whether Russia's interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections would be on the table.

"It's really going to be whatever the president wants to talk about," McMaster said. Cohn added the agenda is still being set up and finalized.

Well of course we are not going to be privy to the adoration that Trump will pour into the ear of the man who helped steal the presidency for him.

You know, when he is not serving as Putin's c*ck holster that is.

I wonder if Putin will show pleasure at what his padawan has accomplished in destroying the integrity of America, or if he will feel the need to punish him for failing to remove the sanctions as promised?

Either way I am sure that Trump is looking forward to it.

President Obama slams Republican presidential candidates over talk of "religious test" for Syrian refugees.

Courtesy of Buzzfeed: 

Toward the end of his press conference on Monday, President Obama became animated, sharply criticizing the idea that the United States should no longer accept refugees from Syria, or only accept Christians, as some including Ted Cruz have suggested. 

“When I hear folks say that, well, maybe we should just admit the Christians, but not the Muslims,” Obama said, “when I hear political leaders suggesting that there would be a religious test for which person who’s fleeing from a war-torn country is admitted, when some of those folks themselves come from families who benefited from protection when they were fleeing political persecution, that’s shameful.” 

“That’s not American,” he continued. “That’s not who we are. we don’t have religious tests to our compassion.”

I heard this in the morning, and I could not have been more proud of our President.

Here is just a sampling of what some of those running to replace him have been saying: 

In a letter to Ryan, Ben Carson -- the retired neurosurgeon and a Republican front-runner -- called for Congress to block funding for any programs "that seek to resettle refugees and/or migrants from Syria into the United States, effective immediately." 

"Until we can sort out the bad guys we must not be foolish," Carson said in a news conference in Nevada. 

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee similarly heaped pressure on Ryan, saying in a statement: "Speaker Ryan needs to make it clear that if the President won't stand to protect America from wholesale open borders, then Republicans will." 

"If Ryan will not lead and reject the importation of those fleeing the Middle East without assurances that we can separate refugees from terrorists, then Speaker Ryan needs to step down today and let someone else lead," Huckabee said. 

In addition, Govs. John Kasich and Bobby Jindal of Ohio and Louisiana, respectively, said they would work to keep refugees out of their states. 

And Sen. Rand Paul, another 2016 contender, introduced legislation that would block the United States from issuing visas to refugees from countries with a high risk of terrorism in an effort to "stop terrorists from walking in our front door."

And of course it was Jeb Bush who said we should only accept Christian Syrian refugees for right now. 

These assholes do not even deserve to the right to stand in the same room as our President much less replace him in the White House.

President Obama and Vladimir Putin pledge to wipe out Daesh in wake of terrorists attacks in Paris.

Courtesy of the Mirror:

America and Russia have pledged to wipe out ISIS . 

Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin sat down at the G20 summit in Antalya, Turkey, for crucial talks. 

The two world leaders were pictured huddled around a coffee table in the aftermath of the terror attacks in Paris .

And Obama and Putin are by no means alone in wanting to bring the fight to the terrorists.

Already France has launched a series of air attacks: 

France bombed the Syrian city of Raqqa on Sunday night, its most aggressive strike against the Islamic State group it blames for killing 129 people in a string of terrorist attacks across Paris only two days before. 

President François Hollande, who vowed to be “unforgiving with the barbarians” of the Islamic State after the carnage in Paris, decided on the airstrikes in a meeting with his national security team on Saturday, officials said.

I totally support the idea of going after the terrorists, but I very much want people to keep in mind the lessons of the Iraq War and  remember that killing people in predominantly Muslim countries in retaliation for attacks conducted by Muslim extremists only exacerbates the problem and does nothing to keep us safe, but rather puts all of us in greater danger.

Sometimes the idea of killing them over there, before they kill us over here, only makes more of them over there want to kill us over here.

P.S. By the way for those confused as to who I am referring to in the title, "Daesh" is the name that ISIS does NOT want you to call them. So of course that will be the only name that should be used to refer to them.

Vladimir Putin gets his feelings hurt during G20 summit and suddenly decides he needs to catch up on his sleep.

Source

Courtesy of Slate:  

If last week Vladimir Putin was 99 percent sure that the West was out to get him, he now knows it with complete certainty. Over the weekend, Western leaders at the G20 summit in Brisbane, Australia, did their utmost to criticize and ostracize the Russian president over his actions in Ukraine. Fed up, the leader of the world’s ninth largest economy skipped breakfast on Sunday to fly home early. 

Even before the summit, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott had vowed to “shirt-front” Putin (i.e., tackle him according to the practice of Australian rules football) over the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper reluctantly shook Putin’s hand, telling him “to get out of Ukraine.” And President Obama, in a speech to students at the University of Queensland, mentioned the global threats of Ebola and “Russian aggression” in the same sentence. 

“Attack on Putin at G20 Summit” was a headline in the Moscow tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets. The newspaper described a “psychological attack” on Putin that began by assigning him to the ageing Hilton Brisbane, hardly worth its four stars, according to Russian diplomatic sources. When Putin arrived, backed up by four warships from Russia’s Pacific fleet, other participants avoided talking to him at public events and largely left him on his own. For the summit’s family photo, Putin was placed on the far edge, next to South African President Jacob Zuma, Moskovsky Komsomolets sniffed.

After this Putin claimed that he needed to get "at least four or five hours of sleep" before returning home, and left on his private jet to start the 18 hour journey back to Moscow.

This is essentially how you deal with bullies on the playground. You keep them out of your games, you let them sit alone at the lunch table, and you mock and snicker about them behind their backs.  Until they take their toys and run home to their mommies.

So much for that macho image.

And remember this was the same Vladimir Putin who received heaps of praise from Republicans earlier this year, and who one Fox News host claimed she wanted to head the United States for a couple of days in order to deal with ISIS.

And wasn't it our own back porch Russia peeping Tina, who claimed that she had more respect for Putin than our President as well?

Oh yes she did!

He harkens back to the era of the czars, and he wants that Russian empire to grow again.

And when she compared Obama to Putin?  

"Well yes, especially under the Commander-in-Chief that we have today, because Obama's...the perception of him, and his potency...across the world is one of such weakness, you know and I...lookit people are looking at Putin as one who wrestles bears and drills for oil. They look at our President as one who wears mom jeans and equivocates and bloviates."

Of course it was OUR President who was honored by the other attendees, gave a very well received speech at the University of Queensland, and who got a commitment from the  Chinese government to curb carbon emissions for the first time in history.  

Not bad for a non-bear wrestling equivocator in mom jeans, right?