The baby blimp
Executive time began early on Thursday, just after sunrise.
Feeling exasperated and feisty as he awoke in the White House residence, President Trump fired off his grievances on Twitter about how the media had been covering his Helsinki summit. And, refusing to be cowed, Trump gave national security adviser John Bolton an order: to schedule a second summit and officially invite Putin to visit Washington.
The two presidents had already discussed the likelihood of a follow-up meeting, but at Trump’s direction Thursday morning, Bolton sprang into action to make it official, making an overture to the Kremlin. By midafternoon the White House announced that plans were underway for a fall summit in Washington.
The bulletin landed midway through a remarkably candid interview of Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats at the Aspen Security Forum that underscored the disconnect and tension on Russia policy between Trump and his administration. The intelligence chief criticized Trump’s performance during the Helsinki summit and — taking a deep breath and then offering a prolonged grimace-laugh — made clear that he had no advance knowledge of the follow-up meeting with Putin.
“That’s going to be special,” Coats said wryly, as the crowd in Aspen, Colo., rallied around him in sympathy for being left in the dark.
For Trump and his White House, the days that followed the Helsinki summit amounted to an unofficial Walk Back Week — a daily scramble of corrections and clarifications from the West Wing. Each announcement, intended to blunt the global fallout of the president’s Russophilic performance in Helsinki, was followed by another mishap that only fueled more consternation.
The Giant Toddler had a tantrum after watching TV and decided to show everybody by inviting the foreign leader who sabotaged Hillary Clinton’s election campaign for him to a big summit at the White House.
That’s what we’re dealing with.
I have no doubt that he made some deal with or is under the influence of Vladimir Putin. There’s just no way to avoid that reality anymore. But he’s also a psychologically and intellectually unfit cretin. There’s something very wrong with him. Either of those problems should disqualify him and render him subject to impeachment. Both together represents a clear and present danger to all of us.
More on his unfitness:
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