The media and Democrats are acting as if President Trump were the first president ever to meet with a tyrant and try to get along better.  They are truly disgusting, because they show how ignorant they are of history.

How can they possibly forget that President Obama dealt with Russia, Iran, and Cuba?  There are so many such examples in the U.S. past.

But the press ran headlines such as "Shameful,' 'treasonous,' 'disgraceful': Trump slammed from all sides for news conference with Putin."

Where have they been all these years?

Lying to get a handshake deal with Iran that still pledges death to America was an especially dangerous bid to work with tyrants, and Obama did that.  That's quite a bit worse than President Trump trying to deal with Russia's President Vladimir Putin.  But the media and Democrats supported that Iran deal, and Obama got their applause.

The following are some other examples of previous other meetings the howlers should have been howling about.

Start with 2012.  Back then, President Obama was overheard over a hot microphone telling President Dmitri Medvedev of Russia he would have "more flexibility" to negotiate with Putin after his re-election.  Why would Obama not be transparent with the public and Congress before the election about what he wanted to do with Russia?  Where was the wall-to-wall coverage on that?  It shows that the current outrage is absolutely as fake as the Russian collusion story always has been.

Everyone acts as though Trump should have loudly hectored Russia instead of negotiating with it, but that wasn't the case with Obama.  In 2017, while he was still president, Obama said that public shaming of Putin wouldn't do any good.  If even Obama knew that it wouldn't do any good, why does everyone act as if Trump should do it?  The media and the Obama Justice Department act as though no one from Trump's campaign should have met with any Russian before he was in office.  That is just plain stupid to even make a statement like that.

Here was the news report:

"It's not like Putin's going around the world publicly saying 'look what we did wasn't that clever.' He denies it. So the idea somehow that public shaming is gonna be effective I think doesn't read the thought process in Russia very well."

People acted as if Trump should have never met with Putin without a formal agenda, but that is exactly what President John Kennedy did with Russian premier Nikita Khrushchev in 1961.  Khrushchev, remember, was the Soviet tyrant who said he would "bury us."

On this day in 1961, President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev met in Vienna for a two-day summit.  In a letter delivered to Khrushchev in March, Kennedy proposed the two leaders meet for an informal exchange of views.  Accordingly, they conferred without a set agenda.

Meanwhile, Jimmy Carter's aides met with Russians during the 1976 campaign, and I am sure that Hillary and people around her talked to many foreign acquaintances during her campaigns, too.  Should Jimmy Carter be indicted for collusion?  Here's the story of what happened there.

Then there is President Harry S. Truman, who actually met with the tyrant and mass murderer Joe Stalin and called him honest and smart as hell.  Truman is routinely ranked in the top ten list of presidents.  Was Truman being treasonous when he met with and complimented Stalin?

The president told Stalin that his own diplomatic style was straightforward and to the point, an admission, Truman observed in his diary, that he thought had visibly pleased Stalin.  Truman hoped to get the Soviets to join in the American-led war against Japan.  In return, Stalin wanted to reimpose Soviet control over territories annexed at the beginning of the war by Japan.

After their initial meeting, according to the presidential diary, Truman, Stalin and their accompanying advisers "had lunch, talked socially [and] put on a real show, drinking toasts to everyone" while posing for photographs.  Truman closed his entry for the day on a confident note.  "I can deal with Stalin," he wrote.  "He is honest but smart as hell."

President Nixon went to China in 1972 and met with Mao Zedong, a move even the left admits was one of his finest moments, prompting one of them to write an opera about it.  Why the change of opinion, lefties?

We also know that Ronald Reagan met with Russians several times and ended the Cold War, bringing down the Berlin Wall.  The media and Democrats treated Reagan as stupid and dangerous, exactly the same way they treat Trump.  The playbook is always the same.  Facts don't matter.  It doesn't really matter what is best for America.  Democrats just want their power back.

Many presidents have met with Putin, and I don't recall any of them chewing him out in public.  Are we supposed to end all diplomacy because it's now "treason"?  Check this out.

If the media, Democrats, and many Republicans want to see what treasonous, shameful, dangerous collusion with the Russians looks like, they should look at Ted Kennedy in 1984 as he sought to destroy Ronald Reagan with every tool the Russians could offer him, including fake news.

Ted Kennedy was a hero to the same people who seek to destroy Trump.  Here's what real collusion looks like.

Image credit: Kremlin.ru, CC BY-SA 3.0.