The New York Times broke a story Thursday evening that Russia had a bounty on the American soldiers in Afghanistan. According to the report, verified by The Wall Street Journal and other news organizations, the Russian government had a deal through at least 2019 to pay the Taliban for each American soldier killed.
So, the president may or may not have heard about the Russian bounty deal with the Taliban back in March. As usual, we've gotten mixed messages from the administration on whether or not the president knew and when or when't [sic] he knew/knew't. Today, before he retweeted a video that included racist language and profanities (from both sides), he tweeted that he didn't know about the bounty. However, the administration doesn't disavow the actual core charge.
Which leads me to contemplate three possibilities:
- The intelligence services and/or his closest advisors were too afraid or oblivious to share this news with the president.
- The president received the information in his Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB), but didn't read it or understand it, and no one pointed it out to him.
- He read it, and ignored it. He didn't care.
None of those three possibilities are especially comforting, nor are they a good look for the president. The fact is that since he was or should have been advised on this attack on American troops by Russia, the president responded by by doing three things:
- He announced the withdraw pulling 28% (9,500) of our troops out of Germany, something that Putin has long desired. Something that will, arguably make the EU less secure from Russian aggression. German Withdraw
- He's petitioned for Russia to be granted readmission to the G7 (G8). If you recall, Russia was kicked out after it annexed Ukraine's Crimea in 2014. Again, this is something that Putin has long wanted.
- Nothing. He has done absolutely nothing about this. In fact, the day after the story broke...when Trump said that he was staying in Washington for the weekend to keep "LAW & ORDER", he went out to play golf at his Virginia course.
