FOREIGN POLICY/FRANCE/RUSSIA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “If Washington is currently a dark place for President Donald Trump, a stop in the City of Light may prove well-timed.
‘The White House is paralyzed,’ a top Republican close to the West Wing told CNN ahead of Trump’s departure to Paris, a withering assessment of an administration whose goals of passing a health care bill, overhauling the tax code and defeating ISIS have been complicated once again.
‘Another week lost,’ is how one official described the legislative timeline for Trump and Republicans, an acknowledgment that the latest swirl of Russia developments complicate an already imperiled agenda.
Escaping what advisers, aides, and other Republicans describe as a White House rattled by Russia bombshells, Trump will find himself here instead embraced by Gallic splendor. He accepted an invitation from the new French president, Emmanuel Macron, to be on hand for Bastille Day, the national holiday that commemorates the start of the French Revolution.
The Paris trip is at least a momentary respite from his current predicament in the United States: embattled against accusations prompted by his oldest son’s meeting with a Russian lawyer and surrounded by lawyers and aides urging him to remain quiet.
Back home, Trump faces a deepening crisis over that meeting, which has jolted the White House and moved the Russian meddling controversy directly into Trump’s inner circle.”
-Jeff Zeleny, Sara Murray, and Kevin Liptak, “‘Paralyzed’ by chaos at home, Trump sets off for Paris,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, July 12, 2017 01:28pm