Putin: U.S. Democrats must ‘learn how to lose gracefully’

“We had a massive landslide victory, as you know, in the electoral college”.

In this year’s poll, Russians told researchers that they thought 2016 had been no better or worse than 2015, but many said they had a much more optimistic outlook now than in any previous year. So it’s noteworthy – and to me, encouraging – that he is advising President-elect Donald Trump, too.

Tragically accurate. MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough were dressed in pajamas on the set of their Christmas morning-themed show – apparently the most insufferable Christmas morning ever staged.

The declarations by the United States and Russian Federation, which possess 90 percent of nuclear weapons in the world, that both will expand their nuclear capabilities, appear as if they were challenging the U.N. resolution. “We will outmatch them at every pass”. It’s unclear who “them” happens to be.

Asked about what he will address in his first meeting with Trump, Putin said, “We need to discuss ways to normalize our relations”. Even then, the overall goal was for nonproliferation. Now, whether that’s going to be realized, we obviously don’t know.

I’m going with whimsy. “The man has very strong control over his country”, Trump has said. Voters and the political press alike should have been more diligent in applying the Cuban Missile Crisis test to Trump.

CNN’s Poppy Harlow noted that Trump was tweeting Friday night as everyone headed into the holiday. He also cast the modernization of Russia’s nuclear arsenal as a necessary response to a US missile defense system. The FBI said this month that it supports the CIA’s conclusion that Russian Federation interfered in the presidential election with the goal of supporting Trump.

He didn’t apologize, but he expressed regret – just as Barack Obama did in May, when he became the first sitting USA president to visit the memorial in Hiroshima to those killed in the 1945 atomic bombing that hastened Japan’s surrender.

“I think Mr. Putin will be delighted”, James Acton, co-director of the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told Business Insider on Friday.

That was his actual answer. “I think the tensions are probably the worst since 1973”. Today you can see the Pershing II and the SS-20 right next to each other – in the Smithsonian Institute, where most would agree such lethal weapons belong. His response was nearly that incoherent. “Everything points to systematic problems in the current administration”. Any one of those two doctrinal shifts is massively destabilizing.

The Savannah River Site was a major center of activity during the Cold War days, producing enough plutonium for 10,000 nuclear warheads. Not after the USA and Russian Federation have spent decades wisely whittling down the number of warheads in their arsenals.

Trump’s intent is unclear because a tweet is not a policy. Some believe they have and some believe they haven’t. “Hillary Clinton has stated multiple times, falsely, that 17 USA intelligence agencies had assessed that Russian Federation was the source of our publications”.

Putin said that the USA military has “more missiles, submarines and aircraft carriers, and we aren’t arguing with that”. “It is not something Trump imagined we would be talking about 72 hours ago”.

Gates, a former defense secretary, Central Intelligence Agency director and deputy national security adviser, spoke with me by telephone Wednesday about the advice he’s giving Trump and his team – and the opportunities and pitfalls ahead.

In that regard, there seems to be some relief at the sight of president-elect Trump appointing to major positions in his Cabinet, individuals who, as business personalities, have had extensive experience in dealing with a Russian Federation asserting itself in the Middle East.

But this subtle play requires a strategic vision and disciplined follow-through – two qualities that Trump has yet to demonstrate.

As a positive move toward nuclear disarmament, the U.N. General Assembly voted to adopt a resolution at a session on December 23, calling for the beginning of specific consultations in March next year toward the establishment of a Nuclear Weapons Convention (NWC). “A threat from America is a useful thing for him to have domestically”.