© Leah Millis / Reuters
"I haven't thought about it. But no, I'm not considering it at all," Trump responded to Reuters' question about whether he would consider lifting sanctions against Russia. "I would consider it if they do something that would be good for us. But I wouldn't consider it without that," he added. "In other words, I wouldn't consider it, even for a moment, unless something was go - we have a lot of things in common. We have a lot of things we can do good for each other."
Trump made the comment during an interview with Reuters at the Oval Office on Monday, which covered a range of topics from social media censorship and tensions with Turkey to the Federal Reserve and Special Counsel Robert Mueller's 'Russiagate' probe. It was unclear which sanctions Trump might have been referring to, just as it wasn't clear what exactly Russia would need to do to get them lifted.
The #Resistance didn't care for details, though, to them this was proof of Trump treason:
Trump, who has repeatedly stressed "nobody's been tougher on Russia than I have," has introduced a number of sanctions against Moscow, in a continuation of punitive policies that began under his predecessor, Barack Obama in 2014, following the US-backed regime change in Kiev.
Comment: 'Nobody's tougher on Russia!' Trump refuses new sanctions after 'precision strikes' in Syria
First sanctions were imposed on March 6, 2014, ten days before the Crimea referendum, for actions that then-US President Barack Obama said "undermine democratic processes and institutions in Ukraine." Even though the region's population overwhelmingly voted to separate from Ukraine and join Russia in March 2014, official US position is that Crimea is part of Ukraine, and that for sanctions to be lifted the peninsula has to be "returned" to Kiev. The US and its allies imposed additional sanctions against Russian officials, companies and individuals, blaming "Russian aggression" for Ukraine's ongoing internal conflict.
Most recent round of sanctions was announced over unproven allegations that Russia had used a nerve agent against former double agent Sergey Skripal and his daughter Yulia.
The move came right after Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) returned from Moscow, where he delivered a letter from Trump, and seemed to sabotage any efforts at diplomacy with the Kremlin. Later a group of hardline US lawmakers from both parties has proposed a "sanctions bill from hell" that would see Russia designated as a state sponsor of terrorism.
Russia has responded to the waves of sanctions by selling off US debt, going from holding $176 billion in US treasures in 2010 to just $14.9 billion as of May this year.
"If they introduce something like a ban on banking operations or the use of any currency, we will treat it as a declaration of economic war," Russian PM Dmitry Medvedev said earlier this month. "And we'll have to respond to it accordingly - economically, politically, or in any other way, if required."
Just goes to show that no amount of glaringly obvious truth can stop the vast majority of humans preferring the Big Lie because of course if you accept the truth - that Russia did not impact the elections then a whole can of worms opens up around why this circus, how this circus, and that's just too uncomfortable a thought - literal risk of brain ache! Hitler nailed it in Mein Kampf and his ever willing pupils in the US/west have been seeding the same mind wrecking knowledge ever since...
I really do despair. Its getting harder and harder to face this world so riddled by such contamination and such blatant and corrosive BS. I suppose we just have to accept it that 16% is the basic benchmark for sane humanity!
"All this was inspired by the principle—which is quite true within itself—that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily ; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.
It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation . For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down , a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying ."
Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, vol. I, ch. X