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Below is a summary of the Trump interview as shown in an article in the Washington Post, and Trump’s nominee for Under Secretary of Defense.

IN A NEW INTERVIEW, TRUMP AGAIN SHOWS THAT HE’S PUTIN’S PUPPET

 July 29, 2020 Opinion/Facts

So Jonathan Swan of Axios did what Chris Wallace of Fox News did not do in an otherwise admirable interview with President Trump: He asked about the reports of Russia placing bounties on the heads of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. The responses were as appalling as you might expect, with the “America First” president once again turning into a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Swan began by asking whether Trump had discussed the reported bounties during his phone call with Putin on July 23. “No, that was a call to discuss other things,” Trump said, explaining that they discussed “nuclear proliferation, which is a very big problem.” Nuclear proliferation is indeed important, although it’s doubtful that Putin has either the ability or the willingness to do much about it. But Putin does have it in his power to stop the headhunting of U.S. troops — if, in fact, it has occurred. But Trump did not ask him to do so or upbraid him for reportedly having carried out such operations in the past. To listen to Trump, the threat to the soldiers under his command wasn’t important enough to bring up.

Trump again cast doubt on the extensive reports, calling them “fake news.” In fact, according to news reporting, the CIA was convinced of the veracity of the claims — especially after Navy SEALs uncovered $500,000 in cash at a Taliban outpost — while the National Security Agency was more skeptical. But the intelligence was credible enough to be widely circulated. Trump flat-out lied when he claimed: “It never reached my desk.” It was reportedly included in the President’s Daily Brief (PDB) in late February. Granted, Trump seldom reads the PDB (in spite of his laughable claim to Swan that “I read it a lot,” and “I comprehend extraordinarily well, probably better than anyone you’ve interviewed in a long time”), but that’s no excuse.

“If it had reached my desk,” Trump said, “I would have done something about it. … But it never reached my desk.” The Russian bounties have reached his desk. They’ve been public since the New York Times broke the news on June 26. Even on the dubious assumption that Trump was previously unaware of the intelligence (which first reached the White House in early 2019), he is certainly aware of it now. But he has not had one word of condemnation for Putin. Not one.

Nor has Trump condemned Russian attempts to steal coronavirus vaccine research and to again interfere in our elections. Meanwhile, he is taking actions — such as withdrawing nearly 12,000 U.S. troops from Germany and inviting Russia back to the Group of Seven — that serve Kremlin interests.

Trump doesn’t just ignore Russian conduct. He justifies it. In the Axios interview, he dismissed Russia’s provision of weapons to the Taliban by saying: “Well we supplied weapons when they were fighting Russia too. … We did that too.” Talk about moral equivalence — an accusation that Republicans usually fling against Democrats. Trump suggests there is no difference between the United States supporting Afghans fighting for their freedom against the Red Army years before the formation of the Taliban and the Russians supporting Islamist extremists fighting to overthrow a democratically elected government.

Trump’s final word on the subject: “Russia used to be a thing called the Soviet Union. Because of Afghanistan, they went bankrupt, they became Russia, just so you do understand, okay? The last thing that Russia wants to do is to get too much involved with Afghanistan.” Huh? It’s undoubtedly true that Russia doesn’t want to invade Afghanistan again, but that doesn’t mean it won’t try to sabotage U.S. interests there. It has, and it will.

This sounds like a Putin talking point that Trump credulously repeated. If so, it wouldn’t be the first time. The most infamous incident was at the Helsinki summit two years ago, when Trump echoed Putin’s disingenuous denials of attacking the 2016 U.S. election (“President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today”). Trump has also justified the Russian invasion of Crimea (“The people of Crimea, from what I’ve heard, would rather be with Russia than where they were”) and the Russian invasion of Afghanistan (“The reason Russia was in Afghanistan was because terrorists were going into Russia,” he said falsely. “They were right to be there”). He even got himself impeached while acting on Russian disinformation that Ukraine, not Russia, was behind the hacking of the election.

We still don’t know why Trump so consistently puts Putin first, but there is no question that he does. The Axios interview is simply the latest evidence that the American president is in thrall to an anti-American dictator. If President Barack Obama had acted this way, is there any doubt that the Republicans would accuse him of treason? But because it’s Trump, the GOP stays silent about this betrayal of our national interests. If you need another reason to vote against Trump and his enablers, this is it: We can’t afford to have a Putin puppet in the Oval Office.

TRUMP’S NOMINEE FOR SENIOR PENTAGON JOB IN TROUBLE HEADING INTO HEARING

By Dan Lamothe and Seung Min Kim

July 29, 2020 Washington Post

President Trump’s contested nomination for undersecretary of defense for policy highlights Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper’s struggles to shield the Pentagon from partisanship. (Alexander Drago/Reuters)

President Trump’s nomination of a retired Army general for a senior Pentagon position appeared to be in trouble Wednesday, with Republicans and Democrats alike expressing concern about his partisan attacks, his comments about Islam, and infidelity.

Anthony J. Tata, a military officer turned novelist and Fox News commentator, faces mounting opposition from Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee because of his past remarks, which include falsely calling former president Barack Obama a “terrorist leader.”

The contested nomination for undersecretary of defense for policy is emblematic of the Trump administration’s difficulty in finding qualified nominees and getting them confirmed. It also highlights anew Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper’s struggles to shield the Pentagon from partisanship while serving under a president who has repeatedly dragged the military into political battles.

The influential position has been held on an acting basis since former undersecretary John C. Rood was swept out of the Pentagon in February, after he warned that the administration should not withhold military aid to Ukraine. That issue ended up at the center of Trump’s impeachment and subsequent acquittal along party lines.

Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), the committee chairman, said in an interview that Trump has made it clear to him that he wants Tata to get a hearing, which is scheduled for Thursday morning. Inhofe, asked about Tata’s past comments, acknowledged that a party-line confirmation vote is possible and aligned himself with Tata, who did not respond to interview requests. “He’s not a real tactful person,” Inhofe said. “But, of course, neither am I. Nor is the president.”

Jonathan Hoffman, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement Wednesday that the department is looking forward “to General Tata having a chance to share his record of leadership and success in public service and his extensive national security experience with the Committee on Thursday.”

But it is not clear whether Tata has enough support among Republicans to be confirmed. His nomination could put those who are facing reelection in the difficult position of either facing the president’s wrath or defending their vote.

One Republican on the committee, Sen. Joni Ernst (Iowa) expressed doubts about Tata on Tuesday.  “You know, I’m still vetting him, but I can’t say that I would be optimistic,” she said in an interview. Ernst added that she has heard “comments from Iowans who are now retired but have worked with him,” and that she values their feedback.

Another Republican, Sen. Kevin Cramer (N.D.), also has remained uncommitted.

“I’ve been visiting with him and I’m getting more comfortable with that, but we’ll have an opportunity at a hearing,” he said. “We’ll see after that, how the hearing goes.”

He has used Tata’s confirmation process to vent unrelated frustrations about the Pentagon’s unwillingness to add the names of sailors killed aboard the USS Frank E. Evans, a destroyer that collided with an Australian aircraft carrier in 1969, to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington because the accident occurred in the South China Sea, outside the war zone.

Tata, 60, served 28 years in the Army, retiring in 2009 after a career that included a stint as the deputy commanding general of the 10th Mountain Division during a deployment to Afghanistan. But his career ended after an Army inspector general investigation found that he had at least two extramarital affairs during his career, despite adultery being a crime in the military.

After Trump nominated Tata in June, CNN surfaced tweets and comments he had made in interviews in which he denigrated Obama and other former senior U.S. officials in conspiratorial terms. 

Tata at one point tweeted in 2018 that Islam was the “most oppressive violent religion I know of” and said that Obama was a “terrorist leader” who did more to harm the United States and “help Islamic countries than any president in history.”

Tata also at one point accused former CIA director John Brennan, without evidence, of attempting to order the killing of Trump through a tweet by quoting the Roman statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero. “This is a signal to someone, somewhere,” Tata wrote. “Cicero was assassinated for political reasons. This is a clear threat against @POTUS.”

At another point in 2018, Tata tweeted at Brennan, telling him he should be prepared to “pick his poison,” including execution or just sucking “on a pistol,” despite the U.S. government’s long struggle to curb an epidemic of suicides among service members and veterans. He included the hashtag “#treason.” Tata apologized in a letter to senators, playing down the attacks as a “few misstatements” made in 8,800 tweets. The remarks, he wrote, “while grievous, are not indicative of who I am.”

A former senior defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said Wednesday that he does not think Tata can be confirmed unless Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) decides to push a vote through by invoking cloture, limiting debate about Tata.

The former official said it was notable that Sen. Jack Reed (R.I.), the committee’s ranking Democrat, came out early against Tata’s nomination, something he does not typically do. The White House, not the Pentagon, is driving Tata’s nomination, and it is unclear whether McConnell will require Republican senators to make “walk-the-plank” votes over Tata, the former official said. “It’s kind of hard to see him as a serious person for a job where you have to negotiate and talk to allies about serious issues,” the former official added.

On Monday, two retired Army major generals who served with Tata defended him in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal. Clarence K.K. Chin and Dana J.H. Pittard wrote that although Tata’s tweets were “ill-considered” and critics have “called for his head,” he had an “unimpeachable record of combating racism and effecting change for the betterment of communities of color.”

Pittard, who is Black, said in an interview that he and Chin, who is Asian American, co-wrote the piece after Pittard asked Tata how he could help with the nomination process.

The article highlights Tata’s work in the 82nd Airborne Division and the 101st Airborne Division to “fix racist and anti-gay cultures” following one murder by a white supremacist soldier in Fayetteville, N.C., and the separate murder of a gay soldier in a barracks at Fort Campbell, Ky.

Pittard called Tata’s comments about Obama “egregious” and “unacceptable” but said he has known Tata since they were classmates at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., more than 40 years ago.  “There are plenty of classmates from West Point who have race problems, believe me,” Pittard said. “But Tony Tata isn’t one of them.”