Donald Trump has gone beyond lying about Vice President Kamala Harris. He’s now just making stories up to smear the Democratic presidential nominee. It’s reached the point that even “Fox & Friends” had to fact-check Trump about a fabricated story about Harris meeting Vladimir Putin before Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022..
We’ve already heard Trump tell the imaginary story about nearly crashing during a helicopter ride with Willie Brown, a Black California politician. Brown said such a trip never occurred. Nate Holden, a former Los Angeles city councilman and state senator, did say that he had been on a helicopter ride in New Jersey when the aircraft developed mechanical trouble and had to make an emergency landing.
But Trump came up with the imaginary helicopter ride story after he was asked a leading question at a news conference about Harris’ long-ago relationship with Brown and whether it helped advance her career. Trump claimed that Brown told him “terrible things” about Harris and “was not a fan of hers … at that point.” Brown told The New York Times that “he had not denigrated Ms. Harris to the former president because he admires and respects her.”
But now we really have to be concerned about the state of Trump’s mental health. That’s because he’s just made up another story about Harris.
This time he wanted to make a point that Harris would be a weak leader when it comes to dealing with Russia’s Vladimir Putin or China’s Xi Jinping.
So at a rally Wednesday in Asheville, North Carolina, Trump said:
“Remember when Biden sent Kamala to Europe to stop the war in Ukraine, she met with Putin and then three days later he attacked. How did she do? Do you think she did a good job. She met with Putin to tell him don’t do it and three days later he attacked.”
Then in a phone-in interview to “Fox & Friend” on Thursday, Trump embellished his imaginary tale by claiming that Harris met Putin in Russia.
Trump said:
“Let me tell you and a little known fact that the press doesn’t want to talk about. Biden sent … Comrade Kamala to see Putin in Russia three days before the attack. She gave her case. He attacked three days later. He laughed at her. He thought she was a joke.
“Now he’s really laughing when he sees her. Can you imagine her negotiating with President Xi of China, with Kim Jong Un of North Korea. The whole thing is like we’re living in a fantasy land.”
That last sentence might be the only thing Trump said that’s true because he is indeed living in a fantasy land in his own mind.
This was too much even for host Brian Kilmeade. After the Trump interview ended. he actually fact-checked Trump’s story. Of course, there’s probably a lot that Trump said in the interview that also needed to be fact-checked.
Kilmeade said:
“Just as a quick clarification we don’t have confirmation that the vice president went to Russia to meet with Vladimir Putin. I know she went over to Europe right before the incursion when Russia invaded Ukraine and it’s a war that’s still going on right now.”
Co-host Ainsley Earhardt then said that she had repeatedly heard about the meeting, which never happened.
“I’ve heard that said a lot,” she told Kilmeade. “You don’t have confirmation that that’s true?”
And Kilmeade replied: “No. I don’t think that — I don’t know if the vice president ever met Vladimir Putin.”
The American Conservative. a mainstream conservative website that opposes Trump’s takeover of the GOP, posted this clip with Trump’s remarks and the fact-check that followed.
And a day after President Joe Biden withdrew from the race and endorsed Harris’ candidacy, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the official TASS news agency:
"Frankly speaking, I cannot recall a single contact between President Putin and Mrs. Harris."
It’s true that Harris was in Europe just days before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. She was leading a bipartisan American delegation at the annual Munich Security Conference (Feb. 18-20,2022). Russia had been invited to attend the conference but chose not to.
Harris spoke at the conference and also met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, vowing that the U.S. was committed to Ukraine’s sovereignty. Biden had already publicly stated that he was convinced that Putin had already decided to invade Ukraine.
And what was Trump saying just a day before Russia invaded Ukraine? The Guardian wrote:
Donald Trump has said that Vladimir Putin is “very savvy” and made a “genius” move by declaring two regions of eastern Ukraine as independent states and moving Russian armed forces to them.
Trump said he saw the escalation of the Ukrainian crisis on TV “and I said: ‘This is genius.’ Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine … Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful.” The former US president said that the Russian president had made a “smart move” by sending “the strongest peace force I’ve ever seen” to the area.
Do you think our allies or even adversaries want to see this unstable self-described "genius" who’s obsessed with sharks and “the late great Hannibal Lecter” with his finger on the nuclear trigger?
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