"This [meeting] demonstrates that despite the almost universal attacks in the US mainstream press, President Trump remains determined to pursue dialogue with Russia," McAdams said on Thursday. "With poll after poll — including a new Gallup Poll this week — showing that the vast majority of the American people support mending ties with Russia, this shows that Trump has his political antenna well in tune."
McAdams said the meeting between Bolton and Patrushev is significant, because it is a follow up of the very important July 16 summit between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki.
"President Trump has tasked his National Security Advisor with meeting his Russian counterpart and the meeting took place," McAdams said.
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McAdams cautioned he would not be very optimistic that putting Bolton in charge of improving US-Russia relations will produce any dramatic results.
"Bolton is a neoconservative, and hating Russia is a basic tenet of neocon faith. He is doing what he is told, but likely with little enthusiasm," McAdams said.
Moreover, the US Congress is for the most part in no mood to improve relations with Russia and President Trump is being forced to fight members of his own party to follow through with his election promises.
"Trump's own administration is trying to sabotage him, as evidenced by his Secretary of State's recent invocation of a 1991 law on the use of chemical weapons to place even more sanctions on Russia over the absurd claim that Moscow had something to do with the Skripals case," McAdams said.
However, after the meeting, Patrushev said that a final communique was not signed due to the US position that it should contain a phrase saying Russia interfered in the 2016 US presidential election, in their opinion, while Moscow denies the allegations of interference.
Patrushev explained that Russia proposed to include in the document a provision on the inadmissibility of US interference in the internal affairs of other countries, but the United States said that they would not sign such a statement at all.
"That was too much for Bolton, and while his fellow Neocons and the Hillary-ite ‘Resist’ types scream about unproven allegations of Russian involvement in the US elections, they never say a word about the US involvement in hundreds of elections and coups overseas," McAdams said. "For them, it's all about ‘democracy’ when we subvert democratic processes overseas. They are hypocrites."
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Earlier in the day, Patrushev and Bolton held a meeting in Geneva that resulted in an arrangement to continue security cooperation and resume suspended bilateral contacts across several ministries and departments, despite the existence of disagreements in certain areas.
The Russian official also said that no accusations against Moscow were voiced at the meeting with Bolton and work was proceeding in a constructive way. Patrushev invited his US colleagues to hold a new meeting in Moscow or any other city in Russia and emphasized that the meeting’s timing was not discussed, but said new talks should be fruitful.
