Parsing the pusilllanimous

Let's analyze some of the things that Donald Trump said during his joint press conference with Russian president Vladimir Putin following their "private" meeting.  You can read the entire transcript here.  

Mr. Trump was asked, "President Trump, you first. Just now, President Putin denied having anything to do with the election interference in 2016. Every U.S. intelligence agency has concluded that Russia did. My first question for you sir is, who do you believe? My second question is would you now, with the whole world watching, tell President Putin, would you denounce what happened in 2016 and would you want him to never do it again?

His response was:  "So let me just say that we have two thoughts. You have groups that are wondering why the FBI never took the server. Why haven't they taken the server? Why was the FBI told to leave the office of the Democratic National Committee? 

I've been wondering that. I've been asking that for months and months and I've been tweeting it out and calling it out on social media. Where is the server? I want to know where is the server and what is the server saying?

With that being said, all I can do is ask the question.

My people came to me, Dan Coates, came to me and some others they said they think it's Russia. I have President Putin. He just said it's not Russia.

I will say this: I don't see any reason why it would be. But I really do want to see the server but I have, I have confidence in both parties.

Reporter's Note:  No, Mr. Trump.  Mr. Coats said there WAS Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign.  It was made clear in the original post-election assessment that was released in January of 2017, and has only become clearer since.  Here is more of Trump's response to the above question.

Trump:  "I really believe that this will probably go on for a while but I don't think it can go on without finding out what happened to the server. What happened to the servers of the Pakistani gentleman that worked on the DNC?

Where are those servers? They're missing. Where are they? What happened to Hillary Clinton's emails? 33,000 emails gone, just gone. I think in Russia they wouldn't be gone so easily."

Reporter's Note:  I'm so tired of hearing about the allegedly missing emails.  It's been made clear they were personal, and while it wasn't a wise move on Clinton's part, multiple probes have cleared her of any criminal wrongdoing.  More importantly, given the Trump Administration's utter lack of transparency about anything, he has no business questioning those who came before him.  He is the first president since the 1970s who won't release his tax returns.  

An analysis by First Amendment Watch showed that the Trump Administration fully complied with only 1 in 5 Freedom of Information Act requests during his first 8 months in office.  The responses to 78% of the 823,222 requests during that period contained no records or only censored records.  The most disturbing factoid from this analysis is that in over one-in-three cases, the government reversed itself when challenged and admitted that it had attempted to improperly withhold documents.

The Trump Administration works diligently to prevent the public from knowing just how many rounds of golf he plays during his visits to his golf properties.  That wouldn't be necessary except that his own claims during the campaign about how he'd be too busy to play golf if elected wouldn't add to the proof of his incredible level of hypocrisy.  Here is another question.

This question was, " For President Putin, if I could follow up as well. Why should Americans and why should President Trump believe your statement that Russia did not intervene in the 2016 election, given the evidence that U.S. intelligence agencies have provided? And will you consider extraditing the 12 Russian officials that were indicted last week by a U.S. grand jury?

In responding first, Mr. Trump said, "Well, I'm going to let the president answer the second part of that question. But, as you know, the whole concept of that came up perhaps a little bit before but it came out as a reason why the Democrats lost an election, which frankly, they should have been able to win because the electoral college is much more advantageous for Democrats, as you know, than it is to Republicans. We won the Electoral College by a lot. 306 to 223, I believe."

Reporter's Note:  No, Mr. Trump, the Electoral College is not much more advantageous to Democrats.  The allocation of votes using this system is unfair to larger states, as I pointed out in a blog entry last year.

Alaska, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming all have 3 electoral votes.  Of those eight states, Trump won five and Clinton took three.  But as a percentage of the population, they break down like this:

Alaska:  0.23%
Delaware:  0.29%
District of Columbia:  0.21%
Montana:  0.32%
North Dakota:  0.24%
South Dakota:  0.27%
Vermont:  0.19%
Wyoming:  0.18%

Each of these states gets one electoral vote for their single member of the U.S. House of Representatives and two electoral votes because every state has two members of the U.S. Senate.  Meanwhile, California has 66% of the population but gets only 55 electoral votes.  The concept of one person, one vote doesn't work with the Electoral College system.  The disparity where larger states get less representation as a percentage of population in the Electoral College definitely favors the Republican Party.

* * *

Mr. Trump talks about not showing weakness, but that is exactly what he did after his summit with Mr. Putin.

Members of Trump's political party are calling him out for his poor performance in that summit.  Trump is responding by telling lies on Twitter.  Familiar?  Yes.  He talks about raising vast amounts of money for NATO.  I'll deal with that specific falsehood and the difference between direct funding of NATO and indirect funding in a separate blog.

I'll leave you with words from the Gubinator.