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Interpreter Trouble: Subpoenaing State Secrets

Interpreter Trouble: Subpoenaing State Secrets
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Our final topic, picked by you, dear listeners, earlier in a poll on our Facebook page, is “Interpreter Trouble: Subpoenaing State Secrets”, focusing on the revival of a Russiagate scandal.

House Democrats are deliberating whether to subpoena Trump's interpreter during last summer's private meeting with President Putin as a means of reviving their stalled "Russiagate" crusade. One of the greatest conspiracies in world history finally began to fizzle out late last year but was brought back to life after the Democrats won the House, which inspired members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to bring up the issue of Trump's interpreter that had previously been politicized at that time. The Republicans, who controlled the House prior to the November midterms, argued that subpoenaing Marina Gross would break an unspoken rule of international diplomacy whereby closed-door meetings between foreign leaders are always supposed to remain confidential unless both decide otherwise.

The Democrats apparently don't care about protecting the integrity of private talks between heads of state and are anxious to have Ms. Gross spill state secrets because of their wishful thinking expectation that she might be able to prove their political fantasy of so-called "Russian collusion" between Trump and Putin. The President, for his part, brushed aside concerns that he agreed to anything improper with his counterpart and said that he has nothing to hide, lashing out at his opponents in his usual outspoken fashion. The little that he revealed about his conversation with Putin, however, was information that was already publicly known and acknowledged in the press conference between the two over the summer, namely that they spent a lot of time talking about securing Israel, in what might be a shrewd deflection of unwarranted criticism by playing to the Mainstream Media's own self-imposed rules of "political correctness".

To explain, it's the height of taboo in American society for anyone to question Israel's existence as an independent state, and seeing as how Trump emphasized that his talks with Putin partially dealt with securing America's top international ally against what are presumably the speculative Iranian threats facing it in Syria, he can't be faulted by his foes without them contradicting one of their most deeply held dogmas. Even in the most extreme and unlikely scenario of Trump agreeing to a quid-pro-quo with Putin in exchange for Russia convincing Iran to withdraw its forces 140 kilometres from the occupied Golan Heights like what later ended up happening, that would just be the way that international diplomacy is commonly conducted and could be justified by protecting Israel.

Andrew Korybko is joined by Fernando Martinez, Independent news analyst from the US who is also a court interpreter with 20 years' experience in the South Florida Courts System, and Luis Lazaro Tijerina, military science historian and military theorist.

Want to sound off and share what you think about this? Send us an email at radio@sputniknews.com or find us on Facebook!

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