Washington Post: Opinion Trump came to Helsinki to kowtow to Putin. Biden came to stand up to him.
By MAX BOOT
If you want to know the differences on national security between Democrats and MAGA Republicans, it all boils down to one word: Helsinki.
Five years ago, on July 16, 2018, President Donald Trump met in the capital of Finland with Russian President Vladimir Putin. There he delivered what Sen. John McCain called “one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory.” Standing next to Putin at a news conference, Trump refused to condemn Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election or even to admit that it had occurred. This came a little more than a year after Trump had attended a NATO summit in Brussels at which he refused to affirm the alliance’s Article 5 collective security guarantee. (He later reluctantly endorsed Article 5 but continued to criticize the alliance relentlessly.)