[ceejayoz]

Because it's not quite the same; JFK et. al. weren't dumb enough to trust the Russians during those contacts. This administration, though…

https://www.nbcnews.com/world/russia/russia-ukraine-war-trum...

> President Donald Trump’s special envoy broke with long-standing protocol by not employing his own interpreter during three high-level meetings with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, opting instead to rely on translators from the Kremlin, a U.S. official and two Western officials with knowledge of the talks told NBC News.

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/427505-trump-put...

> President Trump reportedly met late last year with Russian President Vladimir Putin without a translator or aide from his administration present.

[snypher]

>Trump ... Putin without a translator

House of Cards used this same setup just to highlight how untrustworthy the president was acting.

[AnthonyMouse]

This seems like the same class of complaining about something ridiculous. If Putin wants to lie to you about something, do you expect him to speak the truth in Russian and then have his translator tell you something else? What advantage would that have compared with lying to you in Russian and having it translated accurately?

[ceejayoz]

> If Putin wants to lie to you about something, do you expect him to speak the truth in Russian and then have his translator tell you something else?

Why not? The only other person in the room doesn't speak Russian.

[AnthonyMouse]

You expect Putin of the KGB to presume the person he's speaking to doesn't have a recording device or the ability to remember the words he used and have them translated by someone else later? And if he did think that, wouldn't that be an advantage to the US of doing it that way, to capitalize on the chance he lets his guard down? And if he did let his guard down and Trump failed to capitalize on it, what disadvantage would the US suffer from that compared with the situation where he knows there is a US translator in the room and doesn't say it to begin with?

[ceejayoz]

> You expect Putin of the KGB to presume the person he's speaking to doesn't have a recording device…

Yes, I absolutely expect that sort of security at such a meeting.

[AnthonyMouse]

You expect the Russians to strip search the President of the United States to check for a listening device when they know that person will be in the room to hear whatever is said anyway, and the US to agree to that?

[ceejayoz]

I would expect the Russians to monitor for active electronic devices.

[ZeroGravitas]

I think we're worried about the Trump administration lying about what they talked to the Russians about. A translator with loyalty to the USA might request what they heard.

[AnthonyMouse]

Which is an even more fanciful conspiracy theory since the objection was Trump not bringing his own translator, a person he could otherwise personally select for their loyalty to him.

[ceejayoz]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/us/politics/trump-putin-i...

> Only Mr. Trump, who has alternately contradicted his own narrative of what was said and complained about a lack of fair coverage from a meeting only four people witnessed, could permit Ms. Gross to tell anyone about what she heard. The White House has not said whether Mr. Trump has asked her to do that.

[AnthonyMouse]

So now we can deduce what this is really about.

Translators are civil servants with security clearances, not reporters. When the leaders of Germany and Brazil have a meeting, they may say things they don't intend for China and everyone else to know about, and it isn't the translator's job to report what was said to the media. Unless they've witnessed something on the scale of criminality that they need to act as a whistleblower (in which case they wouldn't need anyone's permission), they should never be telling anyone what happened in the room since their job is to keep those secrets.

The media are fully aware of that, but they're being disingenuous and pretending that allowing a diplomatic translator to act as a media witness is a request anyone is likely to grant. Then Trump predictably responds to that by removing the translator from the room, so now they're complaining about that instead.

[ceejayoz]

> So now we can deduce what this is really about.

The fact that he can't keep his own story straight?

In either instance?

[sbayg]

Just because most of critics are brain dead morons doesn’t mean Trump is a great guy or above the same level of scrutiny shown to previous presidents.

[AnthonyMouse]

That was literally the point. People should stop making farcical complaints that discredit the critics. When you cry wolf every day, eventually the wolf comes.

[sbayg]

False flag farcical comments will always be a thing.

[AnthonyMouse]

When the farcical comments are from major institutions writing under their own name, that's not a false flag, that's just what their own flag stands for now.

[sbayg]

Wait, are you saying leadership at those institutions (say the Washington post) secretly want to help Trump while appearing to be aligned against him, because of say the Zionism angle or like maybe Bezos wants a president that will lower his taxes? If so, that’s not a thing many ears would be able to hear here. More parsimoniously, perhaps the journos and pundits crying wolf (to discredit Trump’s critics) are acting alone. It only takes a few, because real idiots on the internet will latch on to the farcical nonsense and amplify it further. It doesn’t mean NYT/WAPO stand for false flags, it just means they have some political actors within them using plausibly deniable attacks on Trump to help him because they are for lower taxes/zionism/etc…