Trump, Putin rewrite history in Alaska as Republicans stay obediently silent | Opinion

• President Donald Trump continues to deny Russian interference in the 2016 election, contradicting bipartisan conclusions and intelligence reports.
• Republicans in Congress and the Trump administration, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who previously rebuked Trump for siding with Putin, now remain silent on the issue.
• Trump's administration, including Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and AG Pam Bondi, are pursuing criminal investigations against Obama officials who investigated the 2016 interference.

The news out of Alaska on Aug. 15 focused understandably on how President Donald Trump was once again completely and predictably played on the world stage by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

But one element of Trump's international embarrassment drew little notice, as he stood with Putin and again took his side, crying "hoax" while rejecting the bipartisan conclusion supported by America's intelligence agencies that Russia interfered with our 2016 presidential election.

We can't grow numb to the notion that Trump consistently picks Putin over America. That long-standing resentment of his about accurate intelligence on his presidential election has mutated into a source of looming injustice as Trump's top aides eagerly seek to help him distort that history to comply with Russia's corrupt narrative.

It's not enough anymore for Trump to just deny reality. Now he wants to rewrite it so that officials from then-President Barack Obama's administration who correctly identified the 2016 Russian interference are pursued in criminal investigations just for doing their duties.

This inversion of justice and intelligence acts as some kind of balm for Trump's constant state of irritated grievance. And it presents an obligatory abdication of truth for Republicans in Congress who now swallow and regurgitate his lies about 2016.

Trump's only win around Russia is obedient silence

That obedient silence about 2016 from Republicans was really the only win Trump logged in Alaska while meeting with Putin about Russia's unjust invasion of Ukraine. Just consider how Republicans in Congress have contorted on this.

Trump, standing next to Putin at a news conference in Helsinki in 2018, embraced the Russian president's denials about the 2016 election meddling and rejected the assessment from America's intelligence agencies. It was a strikingly shameful moment from his first term, which had no shortage of shameful moments.

Republicans swiftly rebuked Trump, including Marco Rubio, then a senator from Florida, for siding with Putin over America. A bipartisan backlash prompted a rare walk-back from Trump, who, a day later, was forced to say: "I accept our intelligence community's conclusion that Russia's meddling in the 2016 election took place."

That was Trump, seven years ago, grudgingly accepting what was obviously true. But now he wants you to forget what he claimed to accept and see it all not just as a "hoax" but as a criminal conspiracy against him.

We have to take that sort of nonsense seriously because, unlike Trump's first term, his second administration is politically populated with people who would never dissuade him from his worst impulses. This time around, they're jostling to be first in line to amplify those impulses.

Trump and Putin are old hands at rewriting history

Rubio, now Trump's secretary of State, was in the front row for the Trump-Putin news conference on Friday, Aug. 15. He clearly no longer has a problem with Trump lying about Russia and 2016. Congressional Republicans kept quiet about it this time, too.

In Trump's twisted history, his first term was unfairly hobbled by the investigations of election interference, which he again called "the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax" during the Alaska meeting with Putin.

"He knew it was a hoax, and I knew it was a hoax," Trump said as Putin beamed beside him. "But what was done was very criminal, but it made it harder for us to deal as a country, in terms of the business, and all of the things that we'd like to have dealt with, but we'll have a good chance when this is over."

Hear the shift there? Trump is saying that attention paid to what Russia did in 2016, when Putin clearly favored him over Hillary Clinton as America's next president, is an abuse aimed at him that needs to be prosecuted.

That is the shoddy foundation for Tulsi Gabbard, Trump's director of national intelligence, making the easily debunked claim in July that Obama's administration "manufactured" intelligence about the 2016 election interference, which she handed off to Attorney General Pam Bondi in a criminal referral.

Bondi has set a grand jury in motion on that, not because it serves justice but because it complies with the false narrative Trump and Putin are still pushing.

Rubio may be on board with Trump's push for senseless prosecutions to rewrite our history. But his own Senate history is still around for us to read. His party controlled the Senate in 2020 and he was acting chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, issuing a report in August of that year that cited "irrefutable evidence of Russian meddling" in the 2016 election.

Special counsel Robert Mueller, appointed by Trump's first attorney general, issued a 2019 report that confirmed the Russian election interference was driven by Putin's desire for Trump to beat Clinton in 2016.

Putin declared that in public in 2018, standing next to Trump in Helsinki, saying he thought a Trump presidency would be better for Russia.

That turned out to be true. And it might be the only time we hear Putin speak truth, as Trump tries to erase the history of 2016 and replace it with a fabrication that he and Putin prefer.

Follow USA TODAY columnist Chris Brennan on X, formerly known as Twitter: @ByChrisBrennan. Sign up for his weekly newsletter, Translating Politics, here.