Ian Bremmer is a well know pandit, political scientist, professor, geopolitics consultant, entrepreneur & executive. Any one of these would put Mr. Bremmer out of our league but put them all together & Ian Bremmer is some one in a different galaxy we can only gaze upon in wonderment. Despite his exalted status, Mr. Bremmer seems like a nice guy at least in his public appearances. And we are a fan of his cute tweets laced with wry humor. That is why we refer to his tweets more than any one else’s.
Then we saw & heard him explain on CNBC why he “broke” the “story” of a conversation between Trump & Putin, a public conversation at the G-20 dinner in full view of all the foreign leaders & their spouses.
Frankly, we were flummoxed. Watch & read what the erudite & usually self-controlled Ian Bremmer said:
- “There are so many principals in the room; we are talking about the Heads of State & their spouses; so they would have to talk to their people; I know a fair number of them pretty well & have for a long time; over the last six months I have had a lot of conversations about their meeting & phone calls with Trump & how to read them & to what extent they can count on the United States as a solid ally as they have in the past; they have gone increasingly unnerved about things like trade, climate & security & even values; And coming out in this G-20 meeting which of course is the first G-20 meeting Trump himself attended & in full view of all of them, the fact that Trump, by far his best personal relationship is with clearly a country that American allies consider to be their top antagonist & until recently perhaps the United States did as well; That’s why they spoke to me about it …”
This is in an atmosphere in which any one in the Trump circle even suspected of speaking with foreign heads of state or one of ‘their people” would be publicly defamed & privately investigated for potential national security or financial “collusion” with the foreign country.
And in this atmosphere, Ian Bremmer admits to speaking with foreign heads of state & “their people” for six months or more; he admits to discussing the strengths & weaknesses of America’s President presumably to enable the foreign heads of state to benefit from this knowledge to the disadvantage of America & American citizens. Note Ian Bremmer is not doing this for world peace or some Gandhian purpose; he is a guy who speaks & advises clients for money, presumably large sums of money.
This isn’t financial “collusion” with foreign countries? This isn’t worth investigating? Were Bremmer’s conversations recorded or did some one on Bremmer’s staff take notes so that America can know Bremmer wasn’t revealing confidential information that might be used by Bremmer’s foreign clients against America & the American people?
To top it all, Bremmer expresses his concern that “Trump is “going to get played” in his meeting with Putin“. We have a different concern – How do we know that Bremmer was not “getting played” by his foreign clients? Or do we simply “trust” a man who works with foreign governments for money to act in America’s interests over his & his company’s overriding interest in making money from clients?
Now look at the behavior of CNBC anchor Carl Quintannia in this clip. Not one shred of doubt was raised by Quintannia about Bremmer’s actions. Quintannia seemed so enamoured of Bremmer that it bordered on hero worship. Actually let’s forget Quintannia. We all remember Senator Cruz’s savage yet polite reprimand to Quintannia in the CNBC-hosted Republican primary debate for asking irrelevant inane questions.
The real question is whether any one in the Department of Justice or the FBI will seek to question Ian Bremmer about his conversations & his monetary “collusion” with foreign heads of state & their agents in what looks like acting against America’s duly elected & duly serving president. Will Special Counsel Mueller even attempt to find out if Bremmer was so advising foreign governments & their agents during the election in 2016?
That would be a cinch in a Republican controlled congress and with a Republican Attorney General, right? But wait. Both houses of Congress have a Republican majority today and the Attorney General was a Republican Senator before he became AG.
What would Alice say if she were asked to explain this? Probably something like “it’s getting curiouser and curiouser”!
Finally, we wonder whether Ian Bremmer would be willing to speak to us either on the record or off the record. We don’t know but we will ask him for sure!
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