- The Washington Times - Tuesday, February 20, 2024

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Funny that Hillary Clinton, who hand-delivered to Kremlin apparatchik Sergey Lavrov a “reset button” meant to make Moscow-Washington fun, called former President Donald Trump a Putin “puppet” in a December post on X.

Mrs. Clinton’s 2009 reset-button prop in Geneva was open ridicule of former President George W. Bush for being mean to the Vladimir Putin gang over their then-latest invasion, the one of Georgia seven months earlier.

Under Obama-Biden-Clinton, Mr. Putin would then execute his first invasion of Ukraine in 2014. It was about the same time then-Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter racked up a $3.5 million wire to a shell company from Russian billionaire Yelena Baturina.

After the Obama-Biden-Clinton reign, Donald Trump became president. Putin invasions: zero. Then, Mr. Biden and his Obama administration alumni returned to power and Mr. Putin invaded Ukraine again and is still there.

Mrs. Clinton’s supporters, in their desire to sabotage Mr. Trump, whom she repeatedly deemed an “illegitimate president,” did not stop with the 2016 election.

Mrs. Clinton’s clandestine operatives vouched for and circulated a scurrilous 35 pages of rumors around Washington. The Christopher Steele dossier, financed by her campaign, was sourced, he wrote to the Putin gang.

And U.S. intelligence would tell the FBI in January 2017, before Mr. Trump had a chance to take office, that Kremlin intelligence penetrated Mr. Steele’s source network and deliberately planted anti-Trump disinformation.

Let me remind you, it is Mrs. Clinton, who was President Barack Obama’s secretary of state, who says it is Mr. Trump who is the Russian puppet. She also encouraged American tech companies to help Mr. Putin develop the Skolkovo cyber village outside Moscow in 2010 that the FBI later deemed a security threat.

Let’s check the “puppet gauge” by way of a chronology. Yes, Mr. Trump has sounded sugary toward thug Putin. But actions speak louder than words.

November 2018: Reversing Obama-Biden-Clinton, Mr. Trump targets Iran, a major Kremlin regional ally and war mate in Syria, with a sweeping set of financial sanctions to, the president said, “deny the regime the funds it needs to advance its bloody agenda.”

February 2019: In a rebuke, the Trump administration tells Mr. Putin it is pulling out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty because the Kremlin was cheating.

“Russia is solely responsible for the treaty’s demise,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said. He said Mr. Putin has fielded “multiple battalions of its noncompliant missile. … The United States will not remain a party to a treaty that is deliberately violated by Russia.”

The Obama administration raised the issue in 2013, but over the next three years failed to act.

June 2019: Mr. Trump ramps up cyber “incursions” into Russia’s power grid “in a warning to President Vladimir V. Putin” over Moscow computer hacking, The New York Times reported.

December 2019: Mr. Trump stops one of Mr. Putin’s cherished projects, the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. His action blocked a Swiss firm from finishing the line’s technological inserts. In 2018, Mr. Trump had criticized Germany for its pipeline role, saying Berlin had become a “captive of Russia.”

January 2020: Mr. Trump approves the drone strike that killed Iranian terror leader and Moscow ally Qassem Soleimani. He plotted the deaths of U.S. troops with his foreign-deployed Quds Force. Soleimani huddled in Moscow in 2015, and subsequent times, to plan Russia’s barbaric military intervention in Syria’s civil war, Reuters reported. In 2020, a U.N. commission accused Russia of war crimes for deliberately bombing civilian centers.

May 2020: The Trump administration tells Mr. Putin it is pulling out of the Treaty on Open Skies because Mr. Putin is cheating. The idea was to allow the countries to fly over each other’s territory. As the Trump team said, “Russia has increasingly used the Treaty to support propaganda narratives in an attempt to justify Russian aggression against its neighbors and may use it for military targeting against the United States and our Allies.”

October 2020: As it did in 2019, the Trump administration rejects Mr. Putin’s offer to extend START, the treaty that limits nuclear arsenals. Mr. Trump wanted a one-year freeze on all warhead stockpiles.

President Biden took this hard-line approach toward Mr. Putin and quickly dumped it.

February 2021: Mr. Biden extends the START nuclear treaty with Mr. Putin, reversing Mr. Trump’s stance.

May 2021: Mr. Biden lifts Mr. Trump’s sanctions on Nord Stream 2, a capitulation to Mr. Putin from the start.

June 2021: Mr. Biden lifts Mr. Trump’s sanctions on Iran’s national oil company, enriching the murderous regime and enabling it to expand its strategic alliance with Russia. Mr. Biden meets with Mr. Putin in Geneva. Instead of warning Mr. Putin against hacking any American sites, he hands him a list of 16 U.S. critical infrastructures he must not hack.

August 2021: Mr. Biden oversees a deadly chaotic American withdrawal from Afghanistan that he had pledged would be safe and secure. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. embassy would be operating well into the future. Days later, frantic American diplomats destroyed documents and fled the embassy. Mr. Biden and Mr. Blinken were clueless.

December 2021: In a video call, Mr. Biden tells Mr. Putin his troop buildup at Ukraine’s doorstep will have dire consequences if ordered to invade.

February 2022: Mr. Putin invades Ukraine. Mr. Biden reimposes Mr. Trump’s sanctions on Nord Stream 2 after saying they didn’t matter.

By lifting Russian sanctions, placating Iran and overseeing the Afghanistan debacle, Mr. Biden sent the wrong signals to a tyrant who has ruled Russia for the past 25 years as president or prime minister. It was Mr. Biden’s reset button. Mr. Putin did not take Mr. Biden seriously.

We can also ask this question: How did Mr. Trump help Mr. Putin by verbally browbeating NATO allies to become stronger militarily and more energy independent? But that would get in the way of calling him a “puppet.”

• Rowan Scarborough is a columnist with The Washington Times.

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