(Dobbs) Trump's Already Wasting Chips He Didn't Have To Waste

"Let’s jump in my car and maybe behind the tinted windows I can give you a bear hug.”

This probably isn’t exactly what Donald Trump said to Vladimir Putin when the two first met at the airport in Anchorage. But it probably just as easily could have been.

“Welcome Vladimir, welcome to my country.

“I know you’re a ruthless dictator, I know that your army has invaded and half-demolished a once-thriving sovereign neighbor, I know hundreds of thousands of people have died because of you, I know you have broken more promises than you’ve kept, I know there are arrest warrants against you by the International Criminal Court, I know you have cracked down on human rights and freedom of speech and freedom of press and freedom of assembly in your own country, I know you have unjustly imprisoned citizens from our nation so you’d have some pawns to bargain with.

“But welcome to my country. Great to see you. Let’s jump in my car and maybe behind the tinted windows I can give you a bear hug.”

Throwing everything but a formal state dinner at the Russian president after he landed in Alaska was an insult to all the people he has abused and moreover, there was no good reason for it. Putin has his goals in the Alaska talks, Trump has his, although our president waffles so much, we’re never really sure what they are and maybe he’s not either. But Trump’s overly warm welcome for his Russian counterpart isn’t going to change any of that.

The two of them could just as easily sit down and negotiate the war in Ukraine or nuclear arsenals or anything else without the elaborate hug the American president gave Vladimir Putin.

This is Donald Trump wasting chips he didn’t have to waste. Let’s hope the negotiations themselves are less lopsided than the welcome.

Over more than five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He also co-authored a book about the seminal year for baby boomers, called “1969: Are You Still Listening?” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 39-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.

You can learn more at GregDobbs.net