4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, JULY 18, 2018
editor@dailyastorian.com
KARI BORGEN
Publisher
JIM VAN NOSTRAND
Editor
Founded in 1873
JEREMY FELDMAN
Circulation Manager
DEBRA BLOOM
Business Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN
Production Manager
CARL EARL
Systems Manager
GUEST COLUMN
Trump and Putin versus America
rom the beginning of his adminis-
tration, President Donald Trump
has responded to every new bit of
evidence from the CIA, FBI and NSA that
Russia intervened in our last election on his
behalf by either attacking Barack Obama or
the Democrats for being too lax — never
President Vladimir Putin of Russia for his
unprecedented cyberhit on our democratic
process.
Such behavior by an American president
is so perverse, so contrary to American
interests and values, that it leads to only one
conclusion: Donald Trump
is either an asset of Russian
intelligence or really enjoys
playing one on TV.
Everything that happened
in Helsinki on Monday only
reinforces that conclusion.
THOMAS L. My fellow Americans, we
FRIEDMAN are in trouble and we have
some big decisions to make.
This was a historic moment in the entire
history of the United States.
There is overwhelming evidence that our
president, for the first time in our history,
is deliberately or through gross negligence
or because of his own twisted personality
engaged in treasonous behavior — behavior
that violates his oath of office to “preserve,
protect and defend the Constitution of the
United States.”
Trump vacated that oath on Monday, and
Republicans can no longer run and hide from
that fact. Every single Republican lawmaker
will be — and should be — asked on the
election trail: Are you with Trump and Putin
or are you with the CIA, FBI and NSA?
It started with the shocking tweet that
Trump issued before he even sat down with
Putin: “Our relationship with Russia has
NEVER been worse thanks to many years
of U.S. foolishness and stupidity and now,
the Rigged Witch Hunt!” The official Twitter
account of the Russian foreign ministry —
recognizing a useful idiot when it saw one —
immediately “liked” Trump’s tweet and later
added: “We agree.”
I’ll bet they do.
It only got worse when, in his joint news
conference with Putin, Trump was asked
explicitly if he believed the conclusion of
his intelligence agencies that Russia hacked
our elections. The president of the United
States basically threw his entire intelligence
establishment under a bus, while throwing out
a cloud of dust about Hillary Clinton’s server
to disguise what he was doing.
Trump actually said on the question of
who hacked our election, “I don’t see any
reason why it would be” Russia. And in a
bit of shocking moral equivalence, Trump
added of the United States and Russia: “We
are all to blame ... both made some mistakes.”
Trump said that it was actually the American
probe into the Russian hacking that has “kept
us apart.”
To watch an American president dis his
F
AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko
Russian President Vladimir Putin gives a soccer ball to President Donald Trump during
a press conference after their meeting Monday in Helsinki, Finland.
Trump walks back statement on intelligence agencies
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Blistered by bipartisan condemnation of his embrace of a longtime
U.S. enemy, President Donald Trump sought Tuesday to “clarify” his public undermining of
American intelligence agencies, saying he had misspoken when he said he saw no reason to
believe Russia had interfered in the 2016 U.S. election.
“The sentence should have been, ‘I don’t see any reason why I wouldn’t, or why it wouldn’t
be Russia” instead of “why it would,” Trump said, in a rare admission of error by the bombas-
tic U.S. leader. His comment came — amid rising rebuke by his own party — about 27 hours
after his original, widely reported statement, which he made at a Monday summit in Helsinki
standing alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“I accept our intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia’s meddling in the 2016
election took place,” Trump said Tuesday. But he added, as he usually does, “It could be other
people also. A lot of people out there. There was no collusion at all.”
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said Trump was trying to “squirm away” from
his comments alongside Putin. “It’s 24 hours too late and in the wrong place,” he said.
own intelligence agencies, blame both sides
for the Russian hacking of our election — and
deliberately try to confuse the fact that there
is still no solid proof of collusion between the
Trump campaign and Russia with the fact that
Russia had its own interest in trying to defeat
the anti-Putin Hillary Clinton — actually
made me sick to my stomach. I completely
endorse former CIA Director John O.
Brennan’s tweet after the news conference:
“Donald Trump’s news conference per-
formance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the
threshold of ‘high crimes & misdemeanors.’
It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only
were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is
wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican
Patriots: Where are you???”
Trump is simply insanely obsessed with
what happened in the last election. But now
he is president, and the fact that he may not
have colluded with the Russians doesn’t mean
he does not, as president, have a responsibil-
ity to ensure that the Russians be punished for
interfering in our last election on their own
and be effectively deterred from doing so in
the future. That is in his job description.
Listening to Trump, it was as if Franklin
Roosevelt had announced after Pearl Harbor:
“Hey, both sides are to blame. Our battleships
in Hawaii were a little provocative to Japan
— and, by the way, I had nothing to do with
the causes for their attack. So cool it.”
There is only one message Trump should
have sent Putin in this meeting: “You have
attacked our democracy, as well as two
core pillars of the global economic and
security order that have kept the peace and
promoted prosperity since World War II —
the European Union and NATO. We are not
interested in any of your poker-faced denials.
Water
under
the bridge
port, Dallas, Albany and Lake Oswego. There are
590 officers and men in the battalion.
Businessmen along Marine Drive and 2nd to 7th laid strong
protests Monday night before the City Council against elimi-
nation of parking in that area, as recommended by the Oregon
Highway Department and city traffic safety committee.
The council heard the protests, agreed with many of the
points made, and took no action on the no-parking proposal.
But Councilman Arnold Swanson warned that this was
merely a postponement of what will undoubtedly be proposed
again, and suggested that businessmen in the area get busy
trying to line up off-street parking areas for themselves.
Compiled by Bob Duke
From the pages of Astoria’s daily newspapers
10 years ago
this week — 2008
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has removed
the Bradwood Landing liquefied natural gas project from its
Thursday meeting agenda.
North Coast residents were gearing up this week for a pos-
sible vote by the five-member commission on a federal license
for the proposed Bradwood LNG project 20 miles east of
Astoria on the Columbia River.
But a notice issued by email today said the project had
been “struck” from the schedule of discussion items.
FERC spokeswoman Tamara Young-Allen said the com-
mission strikes items from its agenda all the time.
In the Bradwood case, the board needed more time to
review a number of new comments on the project that have
been submitted since Thursday’s meeting was scheduled.
A shortage of Alaskan pollock and other white-
fleshed fish from around the globe has created a sup-
ply crisis among manufacturers of surimi, the pro-
cessed fish protein used to make imitation crab and
other shellfish-flavored products.
Jae Park, a professor at Oregon State Universi-
ty’s seafood laboratory in Astoria, is working with
fellow researchers to find a solution.
The Port of Astoria Commission settled six months of dis-
agreements with Bornstein Seafoods over the proposed Pier 1
parking lot at its meeting Tuesday.
Just know that if you keep doing it, we will
consider it an act of war and we will not only
sanction you like never before, but you’ll
taste every cyberweapon we have in our arse-
nal — and some of your most intimate per-
sonal secrets will appear on the front pages
of every newspaper in the world. Is there any
part of that sentence you do not understand?
“So we will be watching you between
now and our midterm elections,” Trump
should have added. “I’m sure you know the
date. If you behave well, we’ll talk again in
December 2018 about anything you want —
Ukraine, Syria, Crimea or arms control. Until
then our CIA and NSA are on to you and your
cyberspooks. And Vlad, as you may have
noticed from my Justice Department’s recent
indictment of 12 of your agents, you are not
as good as you think.”
That is what a real American president,
sworn to protect and defend the Constitution,
would have said to Putin. He would have
understood that this meeting had only one
agenda item — and it was not developing an
“extraordinary” relationship.
It was d-e-t-e-r-r-e-n-c-e — deterrence of a
Russia that has been increasingly reckless and
destabilizing.
In the past few years, what has Putin done
to deserve an American president sucking up
to him for an “extraordinary” relationship?
Putin has seized Crimea, covertly invaded
Ukraine, provided the missiles that shot down
a civilian Malaysian airliner over Ukraine,
bombed tens of thousands of refugees out of
Syria into Europe, destabilizing Europe, been
involved in the death of a British woman who
accidentally handled a Russian nerve agent
deployed to kill ex-Russian agents in England
and deployed misinformation to help tip the
vote in Britain toward exiting and fracturing
the European Union.
Most of all, Putin unleashed a cyberattack
on America’s electoral process, aimed at both
electing Trump — with or without Trump’s
collusion — and sowing division among U.S.
citizens.
Our intelligence agencies have no doubt
about this: Last week, America’s director of
national intelligence, Dan Coats, described
Putin’s cybercampaign as one designed “to
exploit America’s openness in order to under-
mine our long-term competitive advantage.”
Coats added that America’s digital infrastruc-
ture “is literally under attack,” adding that
there was “no question” that Russia was the
“most aggressive foreign actor.”
I am not given to conspiracy theories,
but I cannot help wondering if the first
thing Trump said to Putin in their private
one-on-one meeting in Helsinki, before their
aides were allowed to enter, was actually:
“Vladimir, we’re still good, right? You and
me, we’re still good?”
And that Putin answered: “Donald, you
have nothing to worry about. Just keep being
yourself. We’re still good.”
Thomas L. Friedman is a syndicated col-
umnist for the New York Times News Service.
1968 — This bulldozer, operated by Art McCoy, pushed
the house at 10th and Grand over the bank this morn-
ing and demolished it. The ground there will be cut
down and used to extend an apartment project.
In a 4-0 vote, with Commissioner Bill Hunsinger absent,
the board approved a three-year lease of .61 acres of Pier 1 to
Bornstein’s beginning Aug. 1.
Hunsinger and Commissioner Larry Phund had voiced the
loudest opposition to leasing parking space on Pier 1 because
they said it’s the only place the Port could potentially attract
water-dependent cargo business.
Andrew and Jay Bornstein argued they needed at least a
three-year lease of the Pier 1 space to secure investors for the
Oregon Fish Factory, an attraction that will invite visitors to
tour the Bornstein fish processing plant.
50 years ago — 1968
More than 1,000 members of the Oregon National
Guard arrived at Camp Rilea Saturday and Sunday
to begin two weeks of intensive field training.
Largest unit at the camp is the 3rd Automatic
Weapons Battalion, 249th Artillery, Salem, com-
manded by Lt. Col. Claude W. Biehn. The unit is
made up of batteries from Salem, Coos Bay, New-
“A wave came up and there was a shark. Then
I paddled in quick, he was toward me, that’s all I
know,” said Gregg Gosser, vacationing in Seaside
for the summer.
Gosser, surfing in the cove about 1:30 p.m. Thurs-
day, was out beyond the last breaker waiting for a
wave to ride in when he spotted the shark about 20
yards away, he estimated. He said the shark was fac-
ing him and he didn’t look back to find out where he
went from there.
75 years ago — 1943
Maj. Eric K. Shilling, aviation liaison officer for Oregon
and president of a special aviation cadet recruiting board,
arrived here today for the first of three days of examining 17-
to 26 year-olds for service in the air corps as pilots, navigators
and bombardiers.
Shilling said the Army is working desperately to enlist can-
didates for bombardier, pilot and navigator assignments. He
said it is no secret that planes are coming off production lines
almost every 20 minutes, and they are rolling to fields faster
than the Army is producing the men to fly them.
The wordy sham battle of Washington, D.C., was
adjourned for the duration today on motion of Pres-
ident Roosevelt, who ordered his appointive officials
to cease calling each other liars, obstructors and
such-like, or to resign.