We begin today’s roundup with Paul Krugman’s analysis of Trump’s behavior at the NATO summit:
Whatever claims Trump makes about other countries’ misbehavior, whatever demands he makes on a particular day, they’re all in evident bad faith. Mr. Art of the Deal doesn’t want any deals. He just wants to tear things down.
The institutions Trump is trying to destroy were all created under U.S. leadership in the aftermath of World War II. Those were years of epic statesmanship — the years of the Berlin airlift and the Marshall Plan, in which America showed its true greatness. For having won the war, we chose not to behave like a conqueror, but instead to build the foundations of lasting peace.
And here’s Robert Kagan with a sobering take:
Any student of history knows that it is moments like this summit that set in motion chains of events that are difficult to stop. The democratic alliance that has been the bedrock of the American-led liberal world order is unraveling. At some point, and probably sooner than we expect, the global peace that that alliance and that order undergirded will unravel, too. Despite our human desire to hope for the best, things will not be okay. The world crisis is upon us.
Former National Security Advisor Susan Rice’s provides her analysis of Trump’s upcoming meeting with Putin:
In normal circumstances, the American president would press Russia on multiple fronts. He would refresh demands that Russia: withdraw from Ukraine and renounce its illegal claim to Crimea; cease backing the murderous Assad regime in Syria and work for a diplomatic outcome that protects the rights and security of all Syrians; stop supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan; halt provocative military actions on NATO’s periphery and harassment of United States personnel in Moscow; extend the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty on nuclear weapons and come clean on its violation of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty; press the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-un, to denuclearize completely; cease destructive cyberoperations; and halt interference in America’s electoral processes and domestic politics, or face harsh additional sanctions. There is a rich and full agenda to pursue, if only we had a president who cared to advance American interests.
Moreover, if President Trump had a national security team willing and able to curb his reckless instincts, he would eschew the pageantry of a stand-alone summit with an avowed adversary and meet in a low-key fashion on the margins of another gathering, like the United Nations General Assembly or the G-20 meeting. The president, when under profound suspicion of being beholden in some manner to the Russians, should never be allowed to meet solo with the far more experienced, savvy and prepared Mr. Putin. This is a recipe for disaster, particularly since Mr. Trump has amply demonstrated his refusal to prepare for critical meetings, stick to a script, or avoid costly own-goals in his foreign engagements. The one-on-one format enables Russia to distort publicly the meeting’s substance and Mr. Trump to cede whatever he wants to Mr. Putin, with no note-taker or adviser present. Such a dialogue is not just diplomatic malpractice; in these unique circumstances, it amounts to rank insanity.
Speaking of Russia, Philip Bump at The Washington Post explains the GOP’s biggest hole in it’s wild-eyed, false conspiracy that FBI agent Peter Strzock was somehow part of a conspiracy to bring down Trump:
In a written statement offered before he testified before the House Oversight Committee on Thursday, Strzok pointedly noted that there was no effort on his part to keep Trump from winning the White House — and, further, that he was one of only a few people who could have potentially leaked details from the investigation in an effort to block Trump’s victory.
“In the summer of 2016,” Strzok wrote, “I was one of a handful of people who knew the details of Russian election interference and its possible connections with members of the Trump campaign. This information had the potential to derail, and quite possibly, defeat Mr. Trump. But the thought of exposing that information never crossed my mind.”
This is a nearly impossible point to rebut.
On yesterday’s Peter Strzok hearing, John Cassidy explains how the Republican strategy to attack him backfired and made the GOP look like fools:
[O]n Thursday, the Republican members of the two committees sought to put him on the griddle before the cameras in a joint hearing, only to discover that messing with G-men can be dangerous. It was they and their President who got burned.
More on the hearing from Rick Wilson:
After an hour of drama-queen badgering from Trey “Benghazi” Gowdy and Bob Goodlatte, Strzok issued two passionate statements that will be the takeaways from an otherwise disorganized and contentious shitshow of a hearing before the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees.
The first was a ringing defense of the FBI, with Strzok showing the kind of real passion that makes for great television. The FBI lifer issued a ringing defense of himself and his agency, punching Gowdy hard in the nose.
On a final note, Eugene Robinson reminds us that the administration is still jailing children in abhorrent conditions and that should be the top news story every day:
Under a federal court order, all 103 children under the age of 5 who were taken from their families at the border were supposed to be returned by Tuesday. The government missed that deadline, and I wish U.S. District Judge Dana M. Sabraw, who issued the order, had held somebody in contempt. One candidate would be Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, who on Tuesday had the gall to describe the administration’s treatment of immigrant children as “one of the great acts of American generosity and charity.”
On Thursday, officials announced with fanfare that 57 of the kids — some still in diapers — had been returned to their parents. But 46 others were deemed “ineligible,” meaning they remain in government custody. [...] This is an administration, after all, that conducts immigration court proceedings, or travesties, in which children too young to know their ABCs are expected to represent themselves without the benefit of legal counsel. Imagine your 3-year-old child or grandchild in that situation. Now tell me how adopting child abuse as a policy is supposed to Make America Great Again.