RC: Exactly. I think Putin certainly liked the fact, it's been pretty well documented, that Putin hoped that Trump would come into power within the U.S. presidency. But he may have gotten a bit more than he bargained for, in terms of the continuity of U.S. policy.
However, what he also got, which I think he was also counting on, is someone who's terribly inexperienced, who is not simply a president in the mold of previous presidents, but one who really doesn't seem to have the first clue about how the office actually operates: how to conduct foreign affairs, or how to read signals from foreign leaders, or how to conduct diplomacy. So, all of these things have to be taught to Trump.
And, basically, from what we've seen so far, people are not having much success controlling him and controlling his impulses that brought him to such trouble in certain aspects of the campaign despite the fact that he won the election. So, I think Putin and Trump meeting together is going to be interesting to see.
Trump has been more heavily scripted on recent foreign trips. The Poland speech was effective by his standards, to the extent that he didn't make any gaffes. And he read from a speech that was very scripted and very polished. So I suspect that we'll see that same kind of script in his meeting with Putin.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
