American media, pundits, and politicians’ condemnation of United States President Donald Trump meeting this week with Russia President Vladimir Putin is deafening. Russia scholar Stephen F. Cohen presented a powerful analysis of this reaction in an interview with host Tucker Carlson at Fox News. “The reaction by most of the media, by the Democrats, by the anti-Trump people, is like mob violence,” Cohen says to start off his insightful analysis.

Continuing, Cohen comments that never in his life has he seen such a reaction to “the president of the United States doing what every president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt did in 1943 with Stalin — meeting with the head of the Kremlin.” And, starting with President Dwight D. Eisenhower, adds Cohen, each president “has met with the leader of the Kremlin for one existential purpose — to avoid war between the two nuclear superpowers.”

A meeting between US and Russia leaders is particularly important today because, Cohen assesses, “relations between the United States and Russia are more dangerous than they have ever, let me repeat, ever been, including the Cuban Missile Crisis.” A very important reason for a meeting between Trump and Putin, explains Cohen, is so the two leaders can “walk back the conflicts that could lead to war, whether they be in Syria, Ukraine, in the Balkan nations, in these accusations of cyber attacks.”

In contrast with previous US presidents having been encouraged to meet with, and applauded for meeting with, their Russian or Soviet counterparts to try to prevent conflict, Cohen notes the uniquely condemnatory reaction to Trump taking part in such a meeting. For the jeerers, Cohen has a question: “Do you prefer trying to impeach Trump to trying to avert war with nuclear Russia?”

Watch Cohen’s complete interview here:

Reprinted with permission from the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.