Hes made comments about the assassination of journalists and hes joked, his Administration Says it was a joke about murdering somebody whether he he was younger. This is somebody who is not a traditional leader ally like you might see in other parts of the region. Yet, the president and white house have talked about this friendly relationship between the two. I think you saw that here in manila. The two toasting. At one point duterte singing a love song in honor of the president , getting up on stage and delivering this duet with lyrics like you are the light of my life, the half of my heart. So clearly the two of them working on this relationship. The president seeming to hope the Good Chemistry leads to good policy. Again, questions on why no mention of Human Rights Abuses here. That is similar to what we saw from President Trump in china, for example, and on past overseas trips. Im thinking of the one, for example, over to saudi earlier in the year. Back in may. The White House Admi
it. i would say, i would like to disabuse people of the notion that the president is either gullible or naive. this is a conscious strategy. is he bending over backwards to try and placate putin and engender some form of too ration. we saw with a statement released on syria by trump and putin, this is laying the groundwork for some sort of ill conceived common collaboration in the syrian theater which would be a disaster. you have to remember russia partnered with hezbollah and the iranian cuds force. this is a very conscious messaging strategy by the president to try to get the united states slowly to engage in some form of collaboration or closer relations with putin. he s doing it for reasons that only he knows. but this is not gullibility or naivete. just to play devils advocate to all of you, we had the reset button with hillary clinton. we had john kerry trying are lavrov to get negotiations going for the future of syria acknowledging that assad is going to play some role if