2016 ELECTION/DEMS/FBI/RUSSIA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Trump made one thing clear after his meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin on Monday [7-16-18]: He is willing to take Mr. Putin’s word over those of his own intelligence agencies about whether the Russians tried to fix the 2016 election. Such an admission by a president sworn to be the principal defender of the Constitution and America’s sovereignty in the world is extraordinary enough. But it was only one of several statements made by Mr. Trump, the likes of which no other American president has ever uttered on foreign soil. He condemned the Justice Department’s investigation of his campaign’s ties to Russia as a ‘disaster for our county.’ He suggested that the F.B.I. deliberately mishandled its investigation of Russia’s hacking of the Democratic National Committee. And he labeled an F.B.I. agent who testified about that investigation before Congress as a ‘disgrace to our country.’ In the fiery, disruptive, rules-breaking arc of Mr. Trump’s statecraft, the president’s remarks in Helsinki on Monday marked an entirely new milestone, the foreign policy equivalent of Charlottesville.”
–Mark Landler, “Trump Sheds All Notions of How a President Should Conduct Himself Abroad,” The New York Times online, July 16, 2018