08-23-2016 (Photo: CNN Michael Smerconish interviews Stephen F. Cohen) http://JohnBatchelorShow.com/contact http://JohnBatchelorShow.com/schedules http://johnbatchelorshow.com/blog Twitter: @BatchelorShow

Decrying Trump & Putin in the New Cold War. Stephen F. Cohen, NYU, Princeton University. EastWestAccord.com

“…Trump alarms Americans of Eastern European ancestry for many reasons. Among them: He has suggested that America will only conditionally live up to its obligations under the NATO charter and questioned the value of the alliance. He’s said he’ll look into whether Putin should be allowed to keep Crimea, which he annexed with complete disregard for international law. “Having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing,” he said this month. Just three weeks ago, Trump pleaded directly with the Russian government to find and release tens of thousands of Clinton’s private emails. Asked whether Russian espionage into the former secretary of state’s correspondence would concern him, he replied: “No, it gives me no pause.” Trump’s campaign chairman until last Friday, Paul Manafort, orchestrated the ill-fated political comeback of Putin ally Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine and is closely linked with other Putin cronies. At the Republican National Convention last month, the Trump campaign stripped the party platform of language calling for the United States to provide lethal weapons to Ukraine to resist Russian belligerence. -- This is not some silly political issue. The stakes are enormous. My colleague Andrew Roth reports from Kiev that “Russia is set to hold large military drills on the peninsula next month. And in eastern Ukraine, the use of heavy weapons between Russian-backed separatists and the army has increased as opposing trenches have crept so close that opposing fighters can shout across the breach. … And in Kiev, it is not unusual to hear again that Russia is preparing to invade Ukraine.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2016/08/23/daily-202-russian-meddling-in-u-s-election-backfiring-on-putin-hurting-trump/57bb9b5bcd249a2fe363ba31/