Very clearly all of the major media outlets, pundits, and intelligence bureaucrats hate Trump. Today there are editorials, columns, op-eds, blog posts, and comments condemning Trump’s remarks in his joint press conference with Russian President Putin in Helsinki. His commments have been called “disgusting” and “treasonous”.

In his column in the Wall Street Journal Walter Russell Meade has a somewhat more tempered reaction:

Why does Mr. Trump seem so determined to defy his advisers and play a Russia card that costs him dearly in Washington and nourishes the suspicions of the investigators probing his Russia connections? His fiercest critics are sure they know the answer: Vladimir Putin has “compromised” the president, leaving him no choice but to appease the Russian dictator.

adding

Mr. Obama’s policy in particular bore similarities to Mr. Trump’s. Both men held Washington’s foreign-policy establishment (“the blob” or “the deep state”) in contempt. Both came to the job with a belief that their unique life stories and personal qualities would enable them to transform global politics in a historic way. Both were willing to accept a Russian presence in Syria and to overlook Russian complicity in Bashar Assad’s atrocities. Long after the 2009 “reset” failed, Mr. Obama was willing to flout domestic public opinion to make concessions to Russia. As he whispered to Russia’s then-President Dmitry Medvedev in 2012: “This is my last election. . . . After my election I have more flexibility,” on issues like missile defense.

While the press celebrated rather than pilloried him for it, Mr. Obama also made overtures to a U.S. adversary (Iran) over the heads of longtime allies (Israel and the Gulf states). Mr. Trump’s Russia overtures over Germany’s head are just as ill-considered.

What differentiates Mr. Trump from Mr. Obama most sharply is his approach to Europe. Mr. Obama saw Europe as a rich and generally well-intentioned part of the world that punches well below its weight in world affairs. Mr. Trump’s view has been profoundly influenced by hard-core Brexiteers like Nigel Farage and anti-Islamist campaigners who see in the EU a mix of fecklessness in defending Western values and ruthlessness in promoting its own bureaucratic power.

My views on Europe comport more closely with President Obama’s while I’ve already expressed my views on Russia. We’ve bungled our relationship with Russia over the period of the last 25 years. The Russians were never going to be our friends but it will now be extremely difficult to engage in any sort of strategic partnership with them and it could have been much better than it is.

Also, be careful about whom you’re cheering. Following the advice of some of Trump’s most vehement critics will lead to war not just with Russia but with Iran, North Korea, and maybe even China as well.

Admidst all of the testifying, posturing, and speechifying of the last week there was this tidbit, reported by CNN:

GOHMERT: Well, I will help you with that too then.

Mr. Rucker reported to those of you, the four of you there, in the presence of the ICIG attorney that they had found this anomaly on Hillary Clinton’s e-mails going through her private server. And when they done the forensic analysis, they found that her e-mails,

every single one, except for four, over 30 000 of them, were going to win an address that was not on the distribution list.

It was a compartmentalized bit of information that was sending it to an unauthorized source. Do you recall that?

STRZOK: Sir, I don’t.

GOHMERT: Well, he went on to explain it. And you didn’t say anything. You thanked him. You shook his hand.

But the problem was that it was going to an unauthorized source that was a foreign entity unrelated to Russia. And from what you have said here, you did nothing more than nod and shake the man’s hand, when you didn’t seem to be all that concerned about our national integrity of our election when it was involving Hillary Clinton.

Here’s my question. Would it make any difference if the “foreign entity” were China? Just curious.

For me President Trump’s remarks in Helsinki fall under the category of I agree with what he said about our relationship with Russia:

Our relationship with Russia has NEVER been worse thanks to many years of U.S. foolishness and stupidity

but I wish he hadn’t said it in that particular context. I don’t think that Americans, particularly American presidents, should say nasty things about the U. S. government to foreigners, particularly when they’re overseas.

That the U. S. policy WRT Russia has been stupid for the last 25 years is so obvious and so easy to substantiate that I find it hard that anyone could deny it. But people do and that makes it a matter of opinion and, well, opinions can differ.

Just don’t say it when you’re meeting with the Russian president in Helsinki.

Update

I have amended the post above to clarify my intention. I thought it was clear from context that I was referring to Trump’s criticism of our policy WRT Russia of the last 25 years rather than the FBI. I don’t think that the president should air our dirty laundry overseas, either, or grind political hatchets but those are other subjects.

I was disappointed by this story in the Wall Street Journal. It starts out interestingly enough with involved espionage by the Israelis on the Iranians. But then we get to this:

Israeli officials acknowledge that the documents are dated; much of the activity they allegedly chronicle occurred before 2003. That is when Iran disclosed and appeared to halt much of its known nuclear research in the wake of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and President George W. Bush’s designation of Iran as part of an “axis of evil,” which led to speculation Iran might be next on the American hit list.

Moreover, much of the activity the documents chronicle already was disclosed or suggested in IAEA reports in 2011 and 2015.

or, in other words the mountain labored and brought forth a mouse. We knew that the Iranians had a nuclear weapons development program that they ended in 2003. We don’t know how far advanced it was but I wouldn’t be surprised if our intelligence services (not to mention Israel’s intelligence service) did.

If the documents had proven that Iran continued its nuclear weapons development after 2003, that would have been big news. Without such information it’s just a propaganda campaign.

I avoid trying to figure out people’s motives. I can see what they do and understand its consequences but I can’t look into their hearts or read their minds so I avoid trying to do so. That having been said it’s hard not to conclude that there are some people who will settle for nothing less than war between the United States and Iran.

In his Washington Post column Robert Samuelson presents his thoughts on why trade war and debt make a deadly cocktail:

Here’s where the trade war and debt may intersect disastrously. Since 2003, global debt has soared. As a share of the world economy (gross domestic product), the increase went from 248% of GDP to 318%. In the first quarter of 2018 alone, global debt rose by a huge $8 trillion. The figures include all major countries and most types of debt: consumer, business and government.

But to service these debts requires rising incomes, while an expanding trade war threatens to squeeze incomes. The resort to more tariffs and trade restrictions will make it harder for borrowers to pay their debts. At best, this could slow the global economy. At worst, it could trigger another financial crisis.

The question that Mr. Samuelson does not consider is, given its risks, why has China engaged in trade war and incurred such high levels of debt for so long? I think the simplest explanations are that it manifestly worked and they still don’t believe that the U. S. will be willing to put up with the discomfort that Trump’s tariffs will bring. They may well be right.

However, I take haste to point out that, contrary to what Mr. Samuelson seems to believe, the war in the Pacific did not begin with Doolittle’s raid and the American Civil War did not begin with Bull Run. Those were counter-attacks. With its predatory mercantilist policies China has been engaging in trade war with the U. S. for the last 25 years. And it started incurring its present high levels of debt more than a decade ago. His concern is a bit late.

At Atlantic Elaine Godfrey pens what is actually a pretty thoughtful article on what Democrats mean when they say “Abolish ICE”. I think she’s being somewhat overly generous. When both the chairman of the DNC and the deputy chairman are calling for open borders, it isn’t much of a stretch to think that they mean that people should not be deported or subject to civil or criminal penalties for entering the country at other than an official entry point and without scrutiny.

In reference to this remark:

I think the European Union is a foe, what they do to us in trade. Now you wouldn’t think of the European Union but they’re a foe. Russia is foe in certain respects. China is a foe economically, certainly they are a foe. But that doesn’t mean they are bad. It doesn’t mean anything. It means that they are competitive.

by the president, I think it’s a poor choice of words. I would agree that the EU is a competitor. Who wouldn’t? Isn’t it obvious? In particular the euro was started explicitly as an alternative to the dollar.

I think there’s an argument that Germany is what might be called “hostile, non-belligerent” with respect to the United States.

I think that China sees trade, diplomacy, and global influence as a zero sum game. For China to rise, the U. S. must decline. We’ve worked very hard at ensuring that Russia and the United States maintain some level of hostility and the Russians have been cooperative. IMO they see the United States and President Trump pretty realistically. Check the third graph in the preceding link. A majority of Russians want closer political, military, and economic ties with the U. S. Seeing a corresponding chart for the U. S. would be interesting. This article from Pew Research suggests the Russians might think of us more favorably than the Germans do.

At The RAND Blog Samuel Charap and Jeffrey Martini make an observation highly relevant to the meeting between Presidents Trump and Putin:

Over the past four years, the United States has enjoyed a luxury in Syria that will soon disappear: The top U.S. priority (defeating the Islamic State in the eastern part of the country) was compatible with the Syrian regime’s top priority (defeating insurgents in the western part of the country). In practical terms, this meant that Damascus acquiesced to U.S. operations and de facto control in the east while Washington — gradually under President Barack Obama and then quickly under Trump — gave up on the opposition in the west. However, this unwritten arrangement is now coming undone as both sides shift their objectives.

Many analysts assumed that the Assad regime only cared about “useful Syria,” a term that refers to the populated western spine that runs from Daraa in the south through Damascus, Homs, Hama, and north to Aleppo. Seven years into the conflict, it turns out that Assad and his allies actually care a lot about water, agriculture, electricity, oil, and control over borders — all of which are found in the country’s east. The assault on the southwest over the past few weeks is a preview of what can be expected east of the Euphrates River, where the United States supports the Syrian Democratic Forces as the authority on the ground.

The situation right now is that the influence of both Russia and the United States in Syria are at their acme. And both of us want to get out. It’s clearly time to negotiate a settlement that gives all of the major parties what they want. Assad gets to keep his country. Russia retains an ally and access to a Mediterranean port. The U. S. doesn’t need to worry about a rising DAESH in Syria. Iran retains a partner that’s beholden to it. What’s missing? Regime change.

Following the indictments of a dozen Russian military operatives for hacking into the Democratic National Committee’s computers, at The Hill Jonathan Turley succinctly summarizes the state of the Mueller investigation to date:

After 14 months of investigation (and for the second time in a formal indictment), the Justice Department has stated that it is not alleging any knowing collusion between Trump campaign officials or associates and the Russians. Back in February, Mueller handed down his major indictment of 13 Russians for actively interfering with the 2016 election by spreading false information. Both Mueller and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein expressly noted that the evidence involved “unwitting” communications with Russians adopting false identities. This indictment shows that same pattern of clearly concealed identities in seeking to hack and distribute email information from the Democratic campaign and its associates.

I remain content to let the Mueller team do its job. Is this latest set of indictments the beginning of the end, the end of the beginning, or just another revelation with many more to come? We don’t know.

But I think it’s time now for me to make a prediction. Everyone is going to disappointed with the results of this investigation. Democrats will be disappointed that Donald Trump won’t be perp-walked to the gallows for collusion. He probably won’t be impeached and in all likelihood will be re-elected. Republicans will be disappointed that he won’t be fully and completely exonerated by the investigation. He and his campaign will look like chumps, eager for any incriminating information they could use on Hillary Clinton and her campaign as well as, needless to say, a quick buck.

And IMO that’s the main message of the events of the last 14 months. We all look like chumps. The DNC looks like a bunch of chumps for recklessness in the handling of their secrets, for foisting the least popular Democratic presidential nominee in American history on their heedless party, for turning the Democratic Party into the junior partner of the Clinton campaign, and for their breathless claims of “collusion”. The Republicans look like a bunch of chumps as they come to take on more and more of Trump’s characteristics including speaking too much, too soon, and well, stretching the truth. The Department of Justice and, particularly, the FBI look like a bunch of chumps for running off at the mouth and for obviously failing to recognize that their prejudices had led them astray. Americans look like chumps for buying the boilerplate accusations and defenses of their political leadership. Even the Russians look like chumps for behaving like comic book villains.