DEMS/FOREIGN POLICY/RUSSIA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey said Wednesday [7-11-18] that he is ‘worried how the President will unfold’ during the upcoming summit between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki. Trump said on Tuesday [7-10-18] that out of several meetings he will attend abroad in the coming weeks, the summit with Putin ‘may be the easiest of them all.’ In an interview on ‘Wolf’ with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Wednesday, Menendez, who is the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, brought up his concerns about the upcoming summit and how he views the President’s attitude towards it…Menendez, who was chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee when the US placed sanctions on Russia after their invasion of Ukraine, pointed Russia’s meddling in the 2016 US presidential election as evidence for his concerns..Menendez added that his biggest concern was Putin’s KGB background. ‘He has a whole dossier. A whole sense of what buttons to push with the President. The President (Trump) doesn’t believe in that type of preparation.'”
–Sarah Hallam, “Sen. Bob Menendez: Trump meeting with Putin alone will be ‘enormously dangerous’,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, July 11, 2018 4:26 pm