FBI/INTELLIGENCE/RUSSIA/TRUMP PEOPLE: “Maybe it was the F.B.I.’s fault for unnerving him. Or maybe the White House staff had left President Trump ill-prepared before his stunning remarks in Helsinki Monday [7-17-18], when he sided with Russia over his own intelligence agencies. At a bar in central Pennsylvania, voters wondered if election meddling was really so terrible. At a mall in Arizona, they insisted that Mr. Trump had actually been quite tough on Russia until, well, whatever that was in Finland. In interviews with conservatives and Trump supporters across a half-dozen states, there were many theories about the president’s performance — he was tougher in private; he is cutting a mega-deal; he has a plan — and more than a few questions about his news conference with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, which left congressional Republicans and at least some voters struggling to stand by their leader…It is by now the signal political cliché of the Trump age that his most dedicated admirers will probably never abandon him. The most telling aside of Mr. Trump’s 2016 candidacy — that he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and retain his support — has given way to a presidency that has broadly proved him right, through trade wars and porn stars, praise for foreign dictators and excuses for white supremacists.”
-Matt Flegenheimer, “After Putin Meeting, Trump Voters Mostly Dig In. But Cracks Are Showing.,” The New York Times online, July 17, 2018