I started yesterday’s Emperor Baby Fists post with the story about the Emperor meeting with Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and the Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak in the Oval Office, which happened on Wednesday, the morning after Bigly fired James Comey. I follow some of news editors and producers on Twitter, and they were absolutely appalled that the first – and ONLY – photos we got from the meeting were from the Russian photographers. The Emperor didn’t allow American photographers into the meeting whatsoever. But wait – the story has gotten even crazier.
First off, many wondered: why is the POTUS meeting with some career political hacks from Russia? That’s a job for the Secretary of State, not the president. Well, Trump decided to meet with Kislyak and Lavrov because Vladimir Putin made a special request of Trump when they spoke on the phone recently. The WH spokesperson said, “He chose to receive him because Putin asked him to. Putin did specifically ask on the call when they last talked.” Lavrov hasn’t been invited to the WH since 2013, and the Obama administration famously had a tense relationship with all of Putin’s people, which is why Obama never had them back in the last three years of his presidency. Some former Obama senior staffers were like, yeah, Putin requested that we meet with Lavrov in the Oval for years and we always said no.
But it gets worse. The Russian photographer who was allowed into the Oval, remember him? Well, Trump’s people didn’t even know he was part of the media. They thought he was just Putin’s private photographer or whatever and the photos were just for Putin.
Trump was similarly accommodating Wednesday morning, when he ushered a Russian photographer into the Oval Office for his meeting with Lavrov — even as he kept the crowd of American photojournalists locked outside. As it turned out, the White House was not discriminating on the basis of nationality, but merely profession — or, at least, that’s what it thought it was doing. The administration did not want any members of the news media to record and publicly disseminate images of the closed-door meeting. But the administration believed that Lavrov’s cameraman was an official state photographer — not a photojournalist. This proved to be a mistake.
“We were not informed by the Russians that their official photographer was dual-hatted and would be releasing the photographs on the state news agency,” one administration official told the Washington Post.
The administration was not eager for the public to see images of Trump getting chummy with Lavrov and ambassador Sergey Kislyak — the man whose conversation with Michael Flynn about the lifting of sanctions ultimately got the national security adviser fired. But some intelligence experts worry that Lavrov may have deceived Trump about more than his photographer’s media ties. As the Post reports: “The officials cited the danger that a listening device or other surveillance equipment could have been brought into the Oval Office while hidden in cameras or other electronics … Among those commenting on the issue was former deputy CIA director David S. Cohen. Responding to a question posed online about whether it was a sound decision to allow the photographer into the Oval Office, Cohen replied on Twitter: “No it was not.” He declined to elaborate when reached by phone.”
The White House insists that the photographer’s equipment was subjected to a security screening and that the Oval Office is routinely swept for bugs. And that should dispel all concerns. After all, what cause do we have to question this administration’s competence?
CNN’s Jim Acosta went so far as to say that the White House was “furious” over the photo situation:
WH furious over Russian government photos of Trump meeting with Lavrov/Kislyak. "They tricked us," an official said of Russians "They lie."
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) May 11, 2017
OMG THEY LIE! THIS IS BRAND NEW INFORMATION. And Jesus Christ, Trump was fine with the photos when he thought they were just going to be the (blackmail?) evidence that he was meeting with his new Russian handlers. But to have the chummy photos be released to the public? THEY TRICKED US!
Photos courtesy of Getty.
Oh I’m sorry but Bollocks, just bollocks. Why the effing h*ll do they even think anyone is buying this crap? Ye Gods I’m on the other side of the pond and we are up to our eyes in our own mess but it’s blindingly obvious these people are crooks, charlatans and downright bloody scoundrels.
Frisbee, true as borderline autocratic as Maybot is at least she’s competent (then any politician is compared to orange satan).
I quickly read that as ‘any politician is compared to an Orangutan’ actually I think the nice big red hairy ape would be a better bet than any of them as well!
Ye Gods I’m on the other side of the pond and we are up to our eyes in our own mess
Tell me about it, fecking hell. At least Trump seems to answer questions to reporters and the reporters try to challenge him. Theresa May can’t and won’t even do that.
Neither will Corbyn who missed a golden PR opportunity yesterday but instead ran away to hide in case the mean press asked him hard questions.
So far in the UK gen election I have been quite impressed by Tim Farron. He’s doing better with the press than the others.
In my fantasy world, the Libdems will sweep to power, do a massive u turn on Brexit, we’ll stay in Europe, all the racists will crawl back under their pre-referendum stones …
As for Theresa – brrrrr, she makes me shudder like no-one else since Thatcher. & maybe Michael Howard.
Frisbee, “crooks, charlatans and downright bloody scoundrels.” I have just never, never read a better description of most politicians. I need this on a t-shirt.
Thank you and be my guest. Given the general quality of politicians worldwide my only real hope left is a benign alien invasion 🙂
“We were not informed by the Russians…” yeah, you also have not been informed about where they hid all the bugs.
Liars. They got caught having a meeting hidden from the American public. The release of the pics was Putin’s way of declaring to the world that he owns Trump.
hmmm, you are so right. It’s pathetic how gullible Trump is.
Those pics! Trump smiling like an idiot not realizing the photos are the Russians announcing to their people that he was pwnd by Putin.
I had lunch in the Navy Mess (dining room for White House staff) during the final months of the Obama administration. I had to submit my credentials weeks in advance. Secret service knows exactly who goes in and who comes out of the White House. This was a set-up alright, but I’m not sure who is responsible.
I agree- it was Putin pulling a string so that Trump remembers who is controlling this puppet show.
If only we had a federal agency that handled meetings with representatives of other countries and another federal agency to keep tabs on all the bad characters so that the federal agency that meets with those representatives would have intelligence information on how to handle them.
No. The Russians did not trick anybody. Voldemort’s Orange Turd’s tweets yesterday were a giant middle finger at the American people. And Princess Nagini the Corrupt posted old pictures of her staring at Marines in Berlin to distract from this mess. She’s exploiting the US Marines Corps now.
You mean she isn’t still walking around Manhattan in a white lace dress (from her own line, of course) for pap pics? I am so behind.
The pictures with the Marines are from her fabulous trip to Germany where she told all those women like Merkel how fabulous Daddy is for women. She only posted them yesterday to distract. Probably didn’t have any new ones of her kids to exploit
But who’s keeping tabs on the second federal agency? 🙂
Jeff Sessions
We, and by we I mean the republic, survived Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, Frankin Pierce, Millard Fillmore, James Buchanan, Chester A. Arthur, US Grant and Warren G. Harding, just to name some of our lousier/more corrupt presidents–we’ll survive this guy too as long as we pay attention and make the rest if the government pay attention too.
I see. But he wouldn’t shake Angela Merkel’s hand.
HATE this man.
+1000
This will be Putin’s campaign ad..don’t they check everyone going into the white house?? Boris and Natasha are probably living in Lincoln’s bedroom😎
We can only pray Moose and Squirrel are on their way to save us.
Oh, Canada! Please send Dudley Doright to help save us.
This is like Rocky and Bulwinkle mixed with the Three Stooges.
The lies, excuses, obfuscation, protestations from baby fists are meant to confuse us. baby fists was celebrating with his peeps Kislyak et al after the Comey firing. baby fists didn’t care about the optics until everyone called him out on it.
baby fists is hip deep in Russian money laundering and other treasonous crimes. His demise can’t come soon enough.
I am filled with glee right now. These morons are either lying or – and in this case that might be worse – they really are appalled that THE RUSSIANS WOULD TRICK THEM! WTF? No really, who is protecting the launch codes? Because this is horrifyingly incompetent and I’d like to know whether it’s possible that this bumbling fool blows us all up by accident. I mean I have plans this weekend.
I don’t understand the Russians though. They got who they wanted, why are they antagonizing the WH like that? Do they have THAT much on them all that they can just bend them over in public?
Russia isn’t antagonizing the WH, at least they’re not the sole target. They are antagonizing our nation and ratcheting up the discord and chaos they started stoking during the election. Having one President in your pocket pays off in the short term, but he can only do so much and there are established ways to get rid of him if it goes too far. Shaking up the very foundation of one of your greatest opponents… well that’s priceless.
I can’t believe I’m quoting Game of Thrones here, but chaos is a ladder. Think of the possibilities when there’s mass confusion, distrust, and fear between the people and our government AND in between each governmental institution with one another. The US will be suffering the ramifications of this presidency for decades to come.
Then there is Bannon who has said many times that he wants to bring chaos to the establishment – if they are not stopped a dystopian new world order is what will be left.
Can we impeach him now?
Patience is a virtue. I love when The White House starts to crumble. I don’t want Donald Trump to be just impeached, I want him annihilated and exiled. He, his mail order wife and all his family will have a special place for them. That is right up Vladimir Putin butt hole.
“and ambassador Sergey Kislyak — the man whose conversation with Michael Flynn about the lifting of sanctions ultimately got the national security adviser fired.” – it was as the same guy, seriously?!
Putin’s administration is obviously leagues above in intelligence- I mean IQ here – from Trump and his dumb staffers.
Honestly any country anywhere with competent diplomats wouldn’t have fallen for this trick.
The US likely has “competent diplomats” but I doubt Trump would listen to them anyway. He thinks he knows more than the career CIA, FBI agents AND the diplomats.
You weren’t tricked you’re just so Fing incompetent that you let a foreign photographer in the Oval and not your own press people. It’s like we don’t have national security people to know about these things. The administration is full of idiots
Well, they just fired their head of the FBI without a replacement so not surprised.
Jaysus.
It would be funny, if it weren’t so stupidly dangerous. I think we ALL know that they were not tricked, so I’m not sure what he thinks this accomplishes.
Either it is another agreed upon set up between he and Putin,, which is bad enough, or he’s trying to go off script which will piss off someone as deranged as he is and who can do a lot of damage.
Sergey Lavrov some career political hack from Russia?
FYI–we should all just assume from here on out that the oval office is bugged.
my god, this is like living in a shitty tom clancy book.
If he any self awareness he would know why he was encouraged by Putin to run, besides calling in the I.O.U’s. They knew that HRC was gonna be a big old problem and then some. This is the worse episode of The West Wing ever.
Any ruler and any head of state does meet the representatives of other nations like foreign ministers and ambassadors and other representatives. Same for millionaire business men and aspiring politicians.
I have no idea why the Americans tie themselves in knots about Trump meeting foreign dignitaries before or after his ascent.
One of the issues is allegedly blocking your own country’s media from said meeting. What’s to hide?
Yes. The issue is not that he met with them. It’s that they blocked US media from the meeting, but not the Russian media, and then were apparently surprised when the Russian media published the pictures. Because they didn’t know the photographer was media?
It would be funny if it weren’t another sign of how Bizarro World this presidency is.
As you just said, you …”have no idea why the American tie themselves in knots about Trump meeting foreign dignitaries before or after his ascent”. I just can’t.
I can.
It is common practice. Foreign officials meet your politicians, your political hopefuls and other businessmen. Happens everywhere and every time.
Because it’s the Russians, the links to whom are being investigated by the FBI, the day after Trump fired the FBI director in dubious circumstances. Plus the Obama staff rejected requests for him to meet with Lavrov.
The report about the alleged russian interference into the election wasn’t FBI but some kind of “new” White House report which was largely derided for lack of substance.
The FBI did intrigate against a presidential candidate and an incumbent president both before and after the election. They didn’t present any facts, though. They just spun intrigues against Trump. That isn’t their job.
If they have evidence they should have presented it.
FBI director Comey got fired for a variety of reasons. Some are related to his agency’s attempts to prevent Trump’s ascent. Some are more daily political tactics.
Obama’s refusal to meet Lavrov was tactical. Obama’s policies (Obamacare) did rub many politicians the wrong way and therefore he tried to appeal to them in other fields of politics: russophobia and military belligerence.
In politics it is custom to either talk to others or to kill them in war. I prefer talking as it produces less dead corpses. You might not like them but you meet them nevertheless. Obama refusing to meet Russian Officials was plain stupid in my opinion. Russia is too big and too powerfull and too rich in resources to be ignored. Ignoring Russia just leads to a change of alliances: The more the Russians got ignored by the West the more alliances between Russia and other Asian nations were created. Ignoring Russia will just drive them “into other nation’s loving embrace”. If the USA doesn’t want neither natural resources nor respect then they should follow Obama’s foreign policies.
Yes, Obama rejected Lavrov and the Russian side so much that he visited Medvedev and spoke to the Russian ambassador just a few weeks after he was elected.
And there was no ”requests” from the Russian side for an Obama-Lavrov meeting in the past few years either.
But keep the the anti Russian xenophobia and paranoia lunacy going. This seems to be the dominant feature of the US discourse anyway.
@Zaratustra: You make too much sense which sadly, means that you are going to get attacked throughout this whole thread. For some people, hanging on to their delusions is a necessity.
Because there are problems with these two characters. There are sanctions in place. And we are paying a Secretary of State to meet with these people. He gave two guys who are known spies access to the Oval Office.
The sanctions were unjustified and stupid actions. They hurt Europe more than Russia or the USA and I think that was the idea of the US government. You can imagine that Europe starts disliking the US for such shitty politics, can’t you?
The US government must meet foreign officials. Even during the time of the Cold War there was a direct connection between USA and the then-Soviet Union.
Refusing to meet them is plain stupid.
There are more US spies in Europe and Russian than the other way around. Clean your own yard before complaining about others.
Hey kids, I think we have attracted a Russian to come play. Zaratustra, you’re good, really good, but some of your syntax and all of your opinions give you away. Plus, in English we spell it Zarathustra. So turn in your keyboard and go drown your sorrows with cheap vodka. We don’t need you here.
@Giddy:
Yes, the xenophobic anti Russian smear continues. And all this because some people dare to have a different opinion from you. And also, apparently, a better syntax.
BTW, if Zarathustra was Russian he would have as much right to participate as anyone else. But of course, you consider that Russians should be excluded from the discussion because you are a paranoid self-satisfied bigot.
And sorry to burst your bubble, but Germans spell ”Zarathustra” and this forum name is most likely related to Nietzsche’s work ”Also sprach Zarathustra”. But bigoted as you are, you still think that everyone should spell a Persian name in the US way.
Good Lord.
Because some of them are too much addicted and attached to their lunacy to let it go. And the alternative would be frightening. If there is no terrifying, external and fundamentally evil Other who could be made responsible for US current frailty, then one would be obliged to recognize that the real problems lie within. Trump, his election and the people who surround him are typically and inherently American phenomena. But this is too frightening and too demeaning to recognize so Russia (and Russians) as a cunning, evil and fundamentally subversive super villain will do.
I would be more worried that the US american media did apparently accept to be gagged over this meeting. CNN agreed to not report according to German media. WTF???
http://www.celebitchy.com/535172/white_house_furious_over_russian-meeting_photos_they_tricked_us/#comment-15483077
Of course the deceptive German upper-class ruled media did twist that into “the Russians lied to us” without even specifying what the Russians might have lied about. Apparently the Russian press did report this and CNN did not and somehow this means the Russians lied ??????
Seriously, sometimes German media is so pathetic.
Btw. why would Trump think that gagging the US media would work? Why didn’t he understand that he would put himself into a hilarious position when he would allow russian media to report but deny the same to US media? He should have never lied about any past or present meetings with Russian Officials.
Putin is in a nice position in this, btw. He can say that Russia doesn’t gag its media and that their government and politicians are transparent about whom they meet.
*LOL*
See above, Boris.
Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, I can’t stop laughing!!!! He thought the Russians would have kept his secret that he had a spy in the White House. American press and photographers were prevented from witnessing the secret documents being passed along to 45. kislyak the spy was there, thank to RT for keeping us informed with photos to prove it.
Seriously, what is with Donald’s skin color on his face??? That’s not just sunless tanner. His face looks *charred*
Dorian Gray backwards. The portrait in the attic is handsome as hell.🤣🤣🤣🤣
He was never handsome. Always creepy.
@Annetommy. The portrait in the attic looks nothing like trump ever did. That’s why it’s handsome.
“After all, what cause do we have to question this administration’s competence?” LOL
He creepily grinned just as big as when he met Kanye.
Not only that, but the Russisns were tweeting during the meeting. It truly is like a Boris & Natasha episode.
Trump is stupid to think that he’s considered an equal by the Russians. Putin looks after Russia and Russia first and Trump is stupid to think that the Russians haven’t scrutinized him to death and I am certain that Putin and Co. have detailed files on all his proclivities and I am sure Crown Princess Serena Joy (Serena Joy of “The Handmaid’s Tale) that Trump hypes as his Heir to the US Empire/Trump Dynasty hasn’t been subject to various investigations into her habits and own proclivities.
The Russians will outplay him at every turn and as a veteran of the KGB, Putin is always going to think nine steps ahead basing his strategy on careful observations of Trump that he’s engaged in over so many years.
You can’t make this stuff up. Kellyanne said that Comey’s firing had nothing to do with the Russians and then the very next day, Trump has a “secret” meeting with 2 Russian government officials(one of which is at the center of the Trump Russian investigation) which was documented by the Russian media controlled by Putin. When confronted, Trump then claims that he had the meetings because Putin told him to and he just couldn’t tell Putin no(then he wonders why people think he is Putin’s puppet) and then tries to shift the blame by claiming that the Russian’s tricked him because they didn’t tell him that the man taking the photos was from the media. To the GOP, we ask, when is enough going to be enough? Putin looked like Chesire Cat, he has succeeded in using Trump to destabilize us. The question is how long will the GOP, who hold the power to remove Trump and Pence(I don’t understand why the media keeps acting like Pence is a innocent bystander, didn’t he get into trouble for using state funds to pay his bills), allow this to go on.
It will take all of us yelling loudly that we aren’t going to take Bigly and his lies anymore. Wait, that’s not enough, because we are mere peons to McConnell, Ryan, and crew. No, we need some of the big money Republican donors to finally wake up, get fed up, and act. We need them to realize that they may think they have their man in the White House, but he has been bought and paid for by the Russians. Everyone needs to put their country above their party and rid us of the Orange Scourge and his band of thieves and thugs.
”that they may think they have their man in the White House, but he has been bought and paid for by the Russians”
Yes, and pink elephants fly too.