Wilfully or innocently Trump is doing Putin’s job for him

As Mr Trump’s interpreter little is known about Ms Gross, but that doesn’t stop just about every US and global politician or diplomat wanting to know what Ms Gross knows about what was said in that extraordinary meeting.

So concerned or incensed were some US Democratic politicians about Mr Trump’s pandering to Mr Putin that they even moved to subpoena Ms Gross to learn what both leaders discussed behind closed doors.

As it transpired their efforts were only thwarted by Republicans during a vote in the US House Intelligence Committee on Thursday.

As US officials have pointed out, subpoenaing a president’s interpreter is unprecedented in modern times. But then the word ‘unprecedented’ has been uttered almost not stop since this week’s now infamous get together at which Mr Trump in the eyes of many senior American officials, betrayed his country and its intelligence services before one of the United States’ most dedicated and dangerous adversaries.

The news that the US President has now offered Mr Putin a further meeting in Washington in the autumn has only added to the prevailing “incredulity” and ire within the US security and foreign-policy establishment

But stepping back for a moment from all this outrage, it’s worth pausing to take stock of the potential damage done by Mr Trump’s conduct in terms of US national interests and those concerning its European and trans-Atlantic allies.

Politically in terms of his home turf not since the Charlottesville fiasco almost a year ago, has Mr Trump’s behaviour triggered such public soul searching among the US political community.

According to some Washington insiders, morale in the West Wing in the wake of that disastrous Helsinki press conference is said to have again plummeted.

The mood has prompted fears among some observers that yet more key officials may be about to resign, perhaps including those who to some degree act as restraining influences on some of the president’s more rash decisions and actions.

“Please don’t resign,” pleaded Kori Schake, head of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), writing in the Atlantic magazine this week.

“We should not want the moral satisfaction and practical devastation of clearing out people of conscience and allow the president to replace them with more malleable or compromised people,” Ms Schake appealed.

Such pleas aside though, there’s no getting away from the fact that Mr Trump’s latest actions have rattled many and continue to reverberate along Washington’s corridors of power all the way to CIA headquarters at Langley and beyond.

The intelligence community especially feels aggrieved. In the FBI’s case Mr Trump has effectively dismissed its indictments of 12 Russian military officers for conducting cyber-warfare against the US during the 2016 elections.

Never has the intelligence community faced a problem like Mr Trump. For them it’s now a question of trying to balance their obligations to the President and Commander in Chief while simultaneously upholding the oaths they have sworn to protect and defend the Constitution.

Mr Trump’s actions have eroded trust to the point where risky security and espionage operations could be curtailed because intelligence professionals doubt the support of the president.

Likewise countermeasures might not be taken say against Russian information and cyber warfare because the president refuses to order them, as only the president can do. Any refusal on Mr Trump’s behalf to deter, retaliate, or otherwise counter such threats, not least with US mid term elections scheduled in November, has many within the country’s intelligence community concerned indeed.

They are not alone in such worries. Much the same mood prevails among many of Washington’s European allies and especially Nato members following Mr Trump’s wrecking ball tactics at the recent gathering of the alliance in Brussels.

For their part increasing numbers of Nato members now see the problem not as Mr Trump being indifferent to alliance relationships, but rather that he’s intent on destroying them.

No better example of the US president’s disdain for Nato and the extent to which he seems willing to inflict the damage Mr Putin would more than welcome, was revealed this week in an interview Mr Trump gave to Fox News.

“Why should my son go to Montenegro to defend it from attack?” the host asked Mr Trump. The president’s reply must have been music to the ears of Mr Putin who has rankled ever since the tiny Balkan country became the 29th member of Nato this time last year.

“I’ve asked the same question,” Mr Trump replied, “Montenegro is a tiny country with very strong people. They’re very aggressive people. They may get aggressive, and congratulations you’re in World War III.”

Mr Trump’s astonishing reply left many observers asking how on earth Montenegro a country of scarcely 600,000 people and possessing a military of fewer than 2,000 troops could possibly be a problem for the US?

Most likely the answer lies in the fact that Moscow was very upset when this small nation joined Nato. For some time Russian intelligence used every dirty trick in the book through propaganda, espionage and subversion to keep Montenegro out of the alliance.

Coming as Mr Trump’s Fox News comments did almost immediately after his behind closed doors meeting with Mr Putin, was this yet more proof of the US president’s willingness to peddle the Kremlin line and help out Moscow whenever he can?

It’s certainly inconceivable that he was oblivious to the message this sent out to Nato.

“By attacking Montenegro & questioning our obligations under Nato, the President is playing right into Putin’s hands,” wrote Republican Senator John McCain on Twitter in response.

And there lies the real question, the extent to which the US President wilfully or innocently is doing the Kremlin’s job. Oh to be Marina Gross.