PRESS RELEASE

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Stephen Cohen—It’s Not Trump, It’s World War III

July 31, 2016 (EIRNS)—Professor Stephen Cohen, the New York University Russian scholar was allowed a brief interview on CNN Saturday. While the interviewer did as expected, trying to ridicule Cohen for defending Putin, implying he must be a Trump supporter, Cohen sternly warned that that the issue in not Trump, but World War III if the West continues on its current path.

"Vladimir Putin wants to end the ’New Cold War’—and so do I," Cohen said.

"We’re approaching a Cuban Missile Crisis nuclear confrontation with Russia, both along Russia’s borders and possibly over Syria. There is absolutely no discussion, no debate, about this in the American media—including, forgive me, on CNN."

CNN tried to turn it into an issue of Trump being Putin’s front-man. Cohen responded that he has nothing to do with Trump, but that when he said he wants to cooperate with Russia in some ways, "astonishingly, the media is full of what only can be called neo-McCarthyite charges that he is a Russian agent, that he is a Manchurian candidate, and that he is Putin’s client. So the real danger is what’s being done to our own political process."

On Trump’s questioning the role of NATO, Cohen said:

"Is NATO an organization in search of a mission? For example, its mission for the last 20 years was to expand ever closer to Russia. So people have now asked why isn’t it fighting international terrorism? That’s a legitimate question—but we don’t debate it. We don’t ask it. We just say, oh, Trump wants to abandon NATO."