From: david.j.worrell@gmail.com

It's never anything. At least, not for me.
But I speak out for what I believe is right anyway.

***

President Trump said on Wednesday that Russia was no longer targeting the United States, contradicting his own intelligence chief and just a day after promising his administration was working to prevent Kremlin interference in the
upcoming midterm
elections.

Mr. Trump’s comments were the latest in a dizzying collection of conflicting statements since he emerged from a private meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin. And they directly contradict assertions from Dan Coats, the director of national
intelligence, who has repeatedly said that Russia continues to try to interfere
with American democracy.

***

Senator Jeff Flake’s push for a resolution condemning the president’s comments is a lovely start, though a bit tame under the circumstances.

***

Eileen Sullivan

Montenegro starts WWWIII?

Trump has long raised questions about the future of the United States’ commitment to NATO. Montenegro joined the alliance in 2017, a year after Russia
plotted a coup to overthrow Montenegro’s government and replace it with one that would be hostile
toward NATO.

Tucker Carlson of Fox asked Trump, “So, let’s say Montenegro — which joined last year — is attacked, why should my son go to Montenegro to defend it from attack? Why is that?”

“I understand what you’re saying,” Mr. Trump said. “I’ve asked the same question.”

The president continued, “Montenegro is a tiny country with very strong people.”

He added, “They have very aggressive people. They may get aggressive, and congratulations, you’re in World War III, now I understand that — but that’s the way it was set up.”

Neither the White House nor Montenegro’s embassy in Washington immediately responded to requests for comment.

Andrew S. Weiss, a vice president at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the president’s comments on Montenegro sounded as if they were lifted from Kremlin talking points.

“Who on earth could have planted this riff in his head about tiny Montenegro possibly starting World War III?” Mr. Weiss wrote in a Twitter post.

***

Thomas Friedman

We’ve never had a president with no shame — and it’s become a huge source
of power for him and trouble for us.

And what makes Trump even more powerful and problematic is that this president with no shame is combined with a party with no spine and a major network with no integrity...

There is no one inside his party or base who is going to sustainably stop Trump
from being himself and doing whatever he bloody pleases. The Republican Party has completely lost its way.

Until and unless the G.O.P.-led Congress passes legislation that protects special counsel Robert Mueller from being fired by Trump or enacts into law specific, deeper sanctions on Russia if it is ever again caught trying to tilt our elections — or
secures Trump’s tax returns or the transcript of his two hours and 10 minutes
of private conversation with Putin — it’s all just talk to cover the G.O.P.’s behind.

Michael Gerson, former George W. Bush speechwriter, in The Washington Post: “Much of the G.O.P. is playing down Russian aggression. And it is actively undermining the investigation of that aggression. Trump’s political tools have become Putin’s
useful idiots. The party of national strength has become an obstacle to the effective protection of the country.”

The G.O.P. has lost its way because it has been selling itself for years to whoever could keep it in power, and that is now Trump and his base. And Trump’s base actually hates the people who hate Trump — i.e., liberals who they think look down on
members of the base — more than it cares about Trump. This is about culture, not politics, and culture doesn’t change with the news cycle.

The fact that Trump’s party and his network always look for ways to excuse him has been hugely liberating for Trump. He can actually deny he said things that were recorded — like his trashing of the British prime minister. He can take one side of any
issue (like trashing key NATO allies to satisfy his base) and, when he gets blowback, take the other side (claim to love the Atlantic alliance). And he can
declare that he really meant to ask why “wouldn’t” Russia be the one hacking us instead of
why “would” it, as he did say. If you believe that last one, I have a bridge near the Kremlin I’d love to sell you.

“Hey, give him a break,” say Trump’s supporters, “there is a method to his madness.” And that is true. What they don’t admit, though, is that there is tremendous madness to Trump’s method. And then, there is just his sheer madness — ideas
he holds that are ignorant gut impulses that bear no relation to science, math or history.

Threatening the U.K. that if it doesn’t do a full Brexit it will not get preferential trade treatment from Trump, calling the bloc a “foe” on trade,
and sneering at the number of refugees it has admitted.

Where do you start? The E.U. is the United States of Europe — the other great
center in the world of free markets, free people, liberty and democracy. It has
kept the peace in Europe after a century of strife there — that dragged us into two world
wars — and its economic growth as a trading partner has made both America and
the E.U. steadily richer and more stable. It is sheer madness to believe that it is in U.S. interests to see the European Union fracture!

Ask any senior U.S. military officer and you’ll be told that our greatest strategic competitive advantage is that we have a network of allies, like the E.U., and the Russians and Chinese do not.

***

William Webster (a former director of the F.B.I. and the C.I.A.,
and a former federal judge)

I am saddened by what I see happening today to the investigation led by the special counsel, Robert Mueller. From President Trump’s tweets to broadsides from his lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani, denouncing the investigation, to calls from
congressional
Republicans for the ouster of Mr. Mueller’s boss, Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, it’s destructive.

I was disappointed to see Mr. Trump this week appear to express greater confidence in the word of President Vladimir Putin of Russia than in the unanimous judgment of the men and women of America’s intelligence community, whom I once led. Faith in the
justice system and in our intelligence agencies cannot be collateral damage in a partisan grudge match.

I’m a lifelong Republican. Mr. Giuliani was a fine federal prosecutor during the years I led the F.B.I. It is because he knows better that I expect him to do better than to demand that the Justice Department shut down an investigation
into possible
Russian interference in the 2016 election. That investigation has already led to 35 indictments — including those last week of 12 Russian intelligence officers in the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton presidential
campaign — as well as five guilty pleas and one prison sentence. To accuse Mr. Mueller of trying “to frame” Mr. Trump is wrong.

Mr. Mueller’s service to country should not require defending. Leading the criminal division of the Department of Justice under George H. W. Bush, he shut down the illegal bank that laundered Osama bin Laden’s blood money. Under George W. Bush,
after Sept. 11, Mr. Mueller led the F.B.I. through one of the most difficult times in our nation’s history. As mayor of New York, Mr. Giuliani himself stood with Mr. Mueller in the rubble of the World Trade Center.

Mr. Mueller, a former Marine and decorated Vietnam combat veteran, was unanimously confirmed twice by the Senate to run the F.B.I. He’s a no-nonsense prosecutor with unquestioned integrity who calls balls and strikes devoid of ideology. Lest anyone
wonder, he is of the same political party as the president and the majority in Congress.

Americans need to know that we are all still united in the pursuit of justice. We should not run down our own institutions, trivialize the impartial actions of our own grand juries, degrade our own justice system, or bully a free press for doing its job.
We do so at our peril.

In times like these, citizens have a duty — to serve, and to speak up. Robert
Mueller is doing his duty. We need to do ours. When I was sworn in as director of the F.B.I., I said we would “do the work the American people expect of us in the way the
Constitution demands of us.” That means defending values like truth, justice and civility, because the idea of an America united by the rule of law is too important to lose.

***

Justin Wise on George Will

Conservative columnist George Will on Tuesday called President Trump a "sad, embarrassing wreck of a man" in criticizing his performance at this week's summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Will said Republicans should be embarrassed by Trump's remarks at the summit Helsinki, Finland, in which he attacked the special counsel investigation into Russia's interference in the presidential election, let various comments by Putin stand without
question and cast doubt on the findings of U.S. intelligence agencies, seemingly putting equal weight on the word of the Russian leader.

Trump sought to walk back some of his remarks on Tuesday, saying he misspoke at
the press conference.

"America’s child president had a play date with a KGB alumnus, who surely enjoyed providing day care," Will writes in a Washington Post column. "It was a
useful, because illuminating, event: Now we shall see how many Republicans retain a capacity for
embarrassment."

Will writes that Trump, "who bandies the phrase 'America First,'” put himself
first and the U.S.'s interests last during his time spent with Putin. He then goes on to list some of the critical comments Trump received regarding his summit from
Republican lawmakers, such as Sens. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) and John McCain (Ariz.).

He also questions if people like Defense Secretary James Mattis, White House chief of staff John Kelly and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats can continue to do their jobs for the president.

Will also questioned whether Russia has something on Trump to "keep him compliant."

"Americans elected a president who — this is a safe surmise — knew that he had more to fear from making his tax returns public than from keeping them secret," Will writes. "The most innocent inference is that for decades he has depended on an
American weakness, susceptibility to the tacky charisma of wealth, which would evaporate when his tax returns revealed that he has always lied about his wealth, too.

"A more ominous explanation might be that his redundantly demonstrated incompetence as a businessman tumbled him into unsavory financial dependencies on Russians. A still more sinister explanation might be that the Russians have something else, something
worse, to keep him compliant."

Will has frequently criticized Trump and the Republican Party throughout Trump's presidency. In June, he called for voters to vote out the GOP in the upcoming midterm elections.

[Here a conservative columnist calls for voters to vote OUT the GOP :).
Right on...]

***

Peter Baker

“The dam has broken,” Senator Bob Corker, a Republican critic from Tennessee, said on Tuesday.

But has it really broken and if so for how long?

For the moment, at least, this time did feel different. After seeming to take President Vladimir V. Putin’s word over that of America’s intelligence agencies on Russian election meddling, Mr. Trump was being accused not only of poor judgment but of
treason — and not just by fringe elements and liberal talk show hosts, but by
a former C.I.A. director.

As the president backtracked on his deferential comments at Monday’s meeting with Mr. Putin and asserted that he really does accept that Russia intervened in the 2016 election, allies assumed that this, too, would blow over.

But the list of Republicans rebuking the president included not just the usual suspects like Mr. Corker, who has been a frequent critic and plans on retiring when his term is up in January, but friends of the president like the former House speaker Newt
Gingrich, who called his performance in Finland “the most serious mistake of his presidency,” and the conservative editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, which called it a “national embarrassment.”

Even some of the normally friendly folks at Fox News expressed astonishment, including Neil Cavuto and Abby Huntsman, whose father, Jon Huntsman, is Mr. Trump’s ambassador to Moscow.

That Russia would become the third rail for the party of Ronald Reagan is a sign of just how far politics have shifted under Mr. Trump. Republicans once denounced President Barack Obama for suggesting that he would have more “flexibility” to work
with Mr. Putin after his re-election; now Mr. Trump treats Mr. Putin as a trusted friend.

And that was too much for John O. Brennan, the former C.I.A. director who had already emerged as one of Mr. Trump’s most vocal critics. He called the performance “nothing short of treasonous.” The late-night hosts Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel
also invoked treason on their shows. The front-page banner headline for The New
York Daily News declared “OPEN TREASON.”

***

Colbert - Trump Walks Back His 'Would' For A 'Wouldn't' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_s3UiWl_Uc

Trevor Noah - Trump Blames His Putin Summit Debacle on a Slip of the Tongue https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11JG5W3WfgM

I dunno, what do you think about all this, Andy?

"The tape of Trump being peed on by Russians couldn’t possibly be
more embarrassing than the tape the world saw today of Trump
giving a Russian a blow job."

“Vladimir Putin says he did nothing,” Mueller told his staff.
“That’s good enough for me.”

Breaking News:

Trump Claims Everything He Has Ever Said
Was Exact Opposite of What He Meant

Trump Denies Meeting Putin

Kremlin Names Trump Employee of the Month

“No one has worked more tirelessly for the glory of the Fatherland
than Donald Trump,” Vladimir Putin said in an official statement.

To mark the honor, Trump’s name will be added to a plaque
that hangs in the hallway outside the Kremlin’s H.R. office.

Amazing Amazon Prime deal!
Bezos Says That When Pee Tape Is Released It Will Be Free
for All Amazon Prime Members


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