Levin: Media Attacking Trump Like 'Psychopaths' Over Putin Summit
Conservative talk show host Mark Levin accused mainstream media personalities of reacting like “psychopaths” following Trump’s joint news conference in Helsinki, Finland, with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday.
Levin also argued that the Democrats, not Trump, have the true record of appeasing the Russians going all the way back to the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt.
Trump received a torrent of criticism from members of the media, as well as lawmakers from both sides of the aisle, for seeming to be as ready to accept Putin’s denial of Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential race as the U.S. intelligence community’s findings that it did.
Trump clarified on Tuesday that he has “full faith” in America’s intelligence agencies, including their findings concerning Russian attempts to influence the election.
Levin told Fox News host Sean Hannity on Tuesday night, “What we’ve learned about the media, several of the hosts and guests, is we have a lot of psychopaths out there, that’s for sure.”
CNN’s Anderson Cooper at the end of the Helsinki news conference on Monday said, “You have been watching one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president at a summit in front of a Russian leader that I’ve ever seen.”
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow said Americans must be willing to face the “worst-case scenario” that Trump may be a Manchurian candidate, who “has ascended to the presidency of the United States to serve the interests of another country rather than our own.”
Meanwhile, MSNBC analyst and former Obama CIA director John Brennan argued that Trump was guilty of “high crimes and misdemeanors” and “treason” against the United States, and implying therefore he should face impeachment.
In addition to hitting the media, Levin, who served in the Reagan administration’s Justice Department, targeted Democrat and Republican lawmakers who spoke out in hyperbolic terms against Trump.
“Now the liberals, the media, the Democrats, some Republicans are very upset about Russia,” he said. “John McCain, God bless him, and others have said that what Trump did at that press conference is the worst interaction we’ve ever had with Russia, the worst diplomatic disaster ever.”
Levin went on to highlight some major diplomatic blunders Democrats have committed concerning Russia, and then contrasted it with the actions Trump has taken to date.
“In 1945, Franklin Roosevelt sold out half of Europe to (Joseph) Stalin,” the best-selling author said. “He repeatedly praised Stalin. Franklin Roosevelt is the hero of the Democrat party, he of Japanese internment camps, too.”
Levin then discussed John Kennedy who, by his own admission, got “beat (to) hell” by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev at the Vienna Summit in 1961. The weakness JFK displayed led directly to Krushchev’s decision to the build the Berlin Wall months later and introduce nuclear missiles into Cuba the following year.
The latter precipitated the Cuban Missile Crisis in the fall of 1962, arguably the closest the world ever came to experiencing all-out thermonuclear war.
Levin also noted that Sen. Ted Kennedy allegedly sought to collude with the Russians to thwart Ronald Reagan’s 1984 re-election bid.
He further pointed out that the Democrats opposed Reagan’s efforts to strengthen America’s national security against Russia, including the anti-missile Strategic Defense Initiative during the 1980s. The 40th president’s “Peace through strength” policy is widely attributed by historians with bringing Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev to the negotiating table. Together the two leaders signed a treaty leading to the largest reduction in nuclear weapons ever.
The Fox News personality then listed the many ways Barack Obama failed to oppose Russian aggression including doing “nothing effective at all to stop the Russians interfering in our election.”
Additionally, he did not push back against the Russian invasion of Georgia, the annexation of Crimea and the invasion of eastern Ukraine.
Obama “capitulated to Russia in Syria, the redlines, his betrayal of Poland and the Czech Republic by acceding to Russia’s demand to remove U.S. missile defense systems there,” Levin said. “He betrayed the Ukraine by refusing them defensive weapons.”
By contrast to that record of “utter appeasement,” he recounted that Trump has expanded sanctions on Russian companies, beefed up NATO, has overseen a massive increase in U.S. defense spending, restored missile defenses to Poland and the Czech Republic, returned heavy armored divisions to Germany, pre-positioned armored divisions in the Baltics, and ended arms embargoes on Ukraine and Georgia.
Levin summarized, “All of this hysteria and the fact of the matter is Trump hasn’t done a thing to harm America with respect to Russia and Obama did nothing to protect America when it came to Russia.”
He concluded, “Bottom line is two entities interfered in our election — the Russians and the Obama administration. The Democrats defend the Obama administration and all of a sudden they don’t like the Russians who they’ve been kowtowing to since 1917.”
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