House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi called out President Donald Trump during her weekly press conference on Thursday for being so soft on Vladimir Putin.
Earlier this week, Pelosi tweeted what she felt the President should extract from Putin when they meet next week:
But considering the way he has continued to insult our allies and embrace Putin this week, Pelosi remarked:
"But all of his behavior this week begs the question that I have asked for 18 months: What do the Russians have on Donald Trump, politically, financially and personally?”
You can watch it below at 13:15.
Many Americans on Twitter agree with Pelosi that the Kremlin and Trump are far too cozy.
And of course, blackmail would not by any means be unheard of from Russia.
In Russian politics, the term is known as Kompromat, or compromising materials. Ways of gathering compromising material usually relies upon entrapment, and often involves exploiting the victim's sexual recklessness.
During the press conference, Pelosi called on Trump to do more than “something more than, "‘I asked him, he said no and that was that.'"
Her words did not stop Trump from alienating allies. Only hours after this speech, Trump criticized British Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May's amenity to a "soft Brexit," which includes a free-trade policy on EU goods and other aspects that, to many conservatives, betray the goal of a hard Brexit. Trump, in a stunning display of consistency, didn't hesitate to express his opinion:
I would have done it much differently. I actually told Theresa May how to do it but she didn’t agree, she didn’t listen to me. She wanted to go a different route. I would actually say that she probably went the opposite way.
Trump also dangled the possibility of killing a trade deal with Britain:
“If they do a deal like that, we would be dealing with the European Union instead of dealing with the UK, so it will probably kill the deal.”
Expressing these opinions on a visit to the United Kingdom is antagonistic at best to what Winston Churchill deemed the "special relationship." It seems to validate the accusations by Pelosi of Trump's alienation toward allies and his admiration of Putin and Russia. The effects of these sentiments probably won't do Trump any favors, but they do align with what Theresa May has described as Putin's interests.
To many, Trump's sentiments played right into Russia's hands.
But Trump isn't the only one being criticized. Pelosi has also recently faced some complaints.
Some Democrats are calling to replace the House Minority Leader with a younger, more radical Democrat as Speaker if the party takes back the House. Recently, Pelosi fell out of favor with many younger Progressives when she disavowed fellow Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA) for condoning the public confrontation of White House officials.
Many progressives felt like the Democratic party should be characterized less by its civility and more by a willingness to fight for justice, a quality Maxine Waters has in spades.
It won't be until after the 2018 midterms that Americans get a clearer picture of Pelosi's fate and the direction of the Democratic party as a whole.
