Putin Is Pleased with Trump's Syria Withdrawal

The collusion has always been happening right out in the open — and it still is. Donald Trump, despite his infamous protestations, is a puppet of Vladimir Putin and continues to make decisions that suit the Kremlin, including and especially his plan to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria.

And Putin isn't being quiet about how pleased he is. Andrew E. Kramer at the New York Times reports:

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Thursday welcomed [Donald] Trump's announcement of a withdrawal of American troops from Syria, calling it "the right decision."

Mr. Trump said on Wednesday that he was ordering the withdrawal because the United States military had achieved its goal of defeating the Islamic State militant group in Syria. But the move caught many by surprise, including some of his military and diplomatic advisers. It has also drawn criticism, even among Republicans, for abandoning Kurdish allies in the fight against the Islamic State and for aiding the geopolitical ambitions of Iran and Russia in the Middle East.

Speaking at his annual news conference, which typically runs for several hours, Mr. Putin said he broadly agreed that the Islamic State had been defeated in Syria. "Donald's right, and I agree with him," Mr. Putin said.

One wonders about the timing of Trump's "surprising" announcement, given its proximity to their secret meeting at the G20, upon which Putin insisted after Trump tried to back out of meeting.

This has long been a goal of Putin's, no matter who became president, so long as it wasn't Hillary Clinton, whose campaign never bit on the "work with Russia to defeat ISIS in Syria" policy that was curiously embraced by every other campaign in 2016, and Trump ultimately got it done.

Which, in some way, should not make this any surprise at all. As Karen DeYoung reports at the Washington Post:

The administration official who spoke to reporters insisted that no one should be surprised at Trump's decision because the president has been saying the same thing ever since the campaign. Asked about contradictions with statements from Trump's own advisers in recent weeks and months, the official challenged "the notion that anyone within the administration was caught unaware."

"It was the president's decision to make, and he made it," said the official, who indicated that Trump was never really behind the longer-term strategy announced in his name in September. "The president's statements on this topic have been 100 percent consistent."

Senior lawmakers of both parties said they had no warning the decision was coming.

But they did. Because Trump really has been threatening to withdraw from Syria as soon as he "defeated ISIS," which he has been claiming for some time now. And, if anyone besides me gave a fuck about how "work with Russia to defeat ISIS in Syria" had played such a perplexing, startling role in the 2016 election, it wouldn't be a surprise that this happened, except perhaps the surprise that it's taken as long as it has.

It's devastating. But it's not surprising.

And it was never going to matter how many generals and "moderating influences" with which Trump surrounded himself, because the only influence that matters to the traitorous puppet occupying the Oval Office is Vladimir Putin.