Greenwald sees Democrats' rhetoric on Russia as a more serious problem, characterizing it as "unhinged". According to Greenwald, "the effect is a constant ratcheting up of tensions between two nuclear-armed powers whose nuclear systems are still on hair-trigger alert and capable of catastrophic responses based on misunderstanding and misperception." Greenwald also wrote that the "East Coast newsmagazines" are "feeding Democrats the often xenophobic, hysterical Russophobia for which they have a seemingly insatiable craving." During a July 2018 panel on "fake news" held by Russian government outlet RT in Moscow and hosted by editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan, Greenwald argued that the Democrats' focus on Russian interference in the 2016 election is motivated by a need to rationalize Clinton's loss. He told "The New Yorker" in August 2018 "'Let’s just get along with the Russians' has been turned into something treasonous". Of Trump, he commented: "Even if he has weird dealings with Russia, I still think it’s in everybody’s interest not to teach an entire new generation of people, becoming interested in politics for the first time, that the Russians are demons." He said that both Trump and Jill Stein were being "vilified for advocating ways to reduce U.S./Russian tensions" and told "Democracy Now!" that the Putin–Trump summit in Helsinki in July 2018 was an "excellent idea" because "90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons are in the hands of two countries—the United States and Russia—and having them speak and get along is much better than having them isolate one another and increase the risk of not just intentional conflict, but misperception and miscommunication".