Martyn Sadler

According to this article in The Spectator, Trump reached an important agreement with Putin in Helsinki about the future of Syria, and, by implication, about the future of Iran and Israel. As the article says, the west backed the losing side in the Syrian civil war, for better or worse, and there seems little point in extending it any longer. It's interesting to see how Netanyahu and Putin seem to have developed a close relationship recently.

She is certainly far better at the job than Sean Spicer was.

The trouble with Trump is that although he often gets the details wrong, as you are obviously very keen to point out, he often gets the big picture absolutely right, as this article by David P Goldman makes clear in relation to Russia and past American policy.

Asking 'Why would they' is another way of saying, in this context, I don't know whether they did. Another way of saying that would be "I don't see any reason why it would be," which Chris tells us are the words Trump actually used. Not too confusing, i wouldn't have thought.

A rhetorical question is a statement. You love splitting hairs. If you had been a scientist 100 years ago I'm sure you would have been the first to split the atom.

I knew that all that Trump watching would give you some genuine insights.

I'm tempted to say 'Why would it?' Or 'I can't see why it would.' A rhetorical question is as near as damn it to a statement of the second kind and it means the same thing.

It doesn't change the meaning of what I posted. But given the way the leaders of the Intelligence community tried to block Trump's presidency I wouldn't be too surprised if he didn't entirely trust them.

I would be reluctant to believe anything Putin says, but it would be useful to have some proof that substantiate the allegations, which I'm not sure anyone has yet produced. I don't know whether you saw the testimony of Peter Strzok to Congress the other day, but if he is a representative sample of the FBI I think I would rather believe almost anyone other than him or people like him.

His original words were "Why would they?" He asked the question rather than saying he believed Putin.

I'm surprised he gave in to pressure. His original comment was more sensible and it was perfectly defensible. Trump has shown himself on this and other issues to be as malleable as most other politicians.

So if you're equating Trump with Chamberlain, are you equating Putin with Hitler? Presumably you favour blood, toil, sweat and tears. Do you think we should attack Russia?

The sanctions were imposed in April, which is after the date of the article you refer to. But in any case I don't think Trump is trying to be tough. Rather, he appears to me to be trying to bring rogue nations on board, by identifying common interests. Given that the Russians have the second biggest arsenal of nuclear weapons in the world, that seems to be a sensible approach to me, and preferable to making bellicose statements. But as I said earlier, we won't find out what the results of the summit will be for quite some time. And of course Trump could have called Putin out in the press conference, but that would have ramped up tensions immeasurably. What would have been the point of that? But if you prefer to be a warmonger, that, of course, is your right.

I'm surprised you didn't add Rugby League into the mix, given the turmoil the game's in and the fact that all signs of turmoil anywhere in the world are apparently traced back to the Kremlin. But on the subject of Trump, he's expelled Russian diplomats, expanded sanctions, sent Javelin antitank missiles to Ukraine and intervened in Syria against Russia's client Bashar Assad. If Putin is pulling the strings, then I'm not sure he's doing it too well. On the other hand, it was interesting to read the body language of the two leaders at their press conference. It was stiff and formal, as though they had held bruising discussions in private, with neither getting exactly what they wanted. It was very different to the body language between Trump and Kim Jong Un at their summit in Singapore for example, when they seemed to part as potential buddies. There was none of that with Putin. And at this press conference Trump read from a script, rather than improvising, as he often does. We'll need to wait a while to discover the true significance of this summit, rather than jumping to immediate conclusions, like some of the American and British media have inevitably done.

i think that Brennan, if it really was him who made that Tweet, is clearly insane.