Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from> around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
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Michelle Goldberg: Trump Shows the World He’s Putin’s Lackey
No matter how low your expectations for the summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin on Monday, it was hard not to be staggered by the American president’s slavish and toadying performance.
On Friday, the Justice Department indicted 12 members of Russia’s military intelligence service for a criminal conspiracy to interfere with the 2016 election and hurt Hillary Clinton’s campaign. The same day, Trump’s director of national intelligence, Dan Coats, gave a speech about America’s vulnerability to cyberattacks, particularly from Russia. “I’m here to say, the warning lights are blinking red again,” he said, comparing the threat to the one that preceded Sept. 11.
But standing beside Putin in Helsinki on Monday, Trump sided with the Russian president against American intelligence agencies while spewing lies and conspiracy theories. [..]
While I was as shocked as everyone else, I shouldn’t have been. Trump’s behavior on Monday recalled his outburst at Trump Tower after the violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, when he insisted there were “very fine people” among the racist demonstrators. Both times, everything Trump said was in keeping with things he’d said before. The shocking part was his frankness. Then, as now, it forced, if just for a moment, a collective apprehension of just what a repulsive abomination this presidency is.
Eugene Robinson: Trump is a Putin fanboy. Someday we’ll know why.
President Trump is succeeding wildly in one clear, if unannounced, objective: to Make Russia Great Again.
Trump’s summit in Helsinki with Russian President Vladimir Putin went a long way toward achieving Putin’s most cherished goal, which is to return his vast and complicated nation to the exalted geopolitical status it long enjoyed as part of the Soviet Union. [..]
Look at what Trump “accomplished” — and I use the word ironically — in a brief foreign trip. He weakened the NATO alliance, bashing other member countries at a contentious meeting in Brussels. He undermined British Prime Minister Theresa May, saying she was taking the wrong approach to Britain’s exit from the European Union. He showed up late for tea with Queen Elizabeth II. He parroted and amplified the racist anti-immigration views of the European far right. He described the E.U. as a geopolitical “foe.”
It was fitting, then, that he ended his journey by kowtowing to Putin. It is not paranoia to point out that no world leader benefits more from Trump’s foreign policy. Someday, and I hope it’s soon, we will learn why.
Catherine Rampell: Why do Republicans hate consumers?
Why do Republicans hate consumers so much?
Seriously. It’s bizarre. Whenever they get the chance, Republican officials seem intent on bleeding consumers dry. Or at least celebrating others’ bloodletting.
Such consumers might be 9/11 first responders and brain-injured National Football League players alleged to have been bilked out of millions of dollars from legal settlements. Or a student who took out thousands of dollars in loans for a degree that turned out to be worthless, from a for-profit school that went belly up. Or an elderly man who was abused at a nursing home but is legally barred from suing.
Those are all actual cases in which a consumer has gotten squeezed, or was blocked from seeking recourse in a dispute with a business. And just about every time, Republican officials have come down against the consumer.
Consider President Trump’s nominee to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau , who is scheduled to have her Senate confirmation hearing Thursday.
Paul Krugman: The G.O.P.’s War on the Poor
Four years ago, on the 50th anniversary of Lyndon Johnson’s war on poverty, House Republicans led by Paul Ryan issued a report declaring that war a failure. Poverty, they asserted, hadn’t fallen. Therefore, they concluded, we must slash spending on the poor.
Last week, Donald Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers issued a new report on poverty, recognizing what most experts in the field have said: The standard poverty measure is badly flawed, and a better measure shows substantial progress. In fact, these advisers went so far as to assert that poverty is no longer a problem. (Do these people ever get out into the real world?)
Anyway, the war on poverty, said the report, “is largely over and a success.” And our response, says the Trump administration, should be to … slash spending on the poor.
O.K., the report doesn’t openly call for benefit cuts. Instead, it calls for the widespread imposition of work requirements for Medicaid, food stamps and other programs. But that would have the effect of sharply reducing those programs’ coverage.
Richard Wolffe: Trump outdoes Orwell in role as Moscow’s Agent Orange
The best disinformation and psy-ops campaigns are supposed to leave you dazed and confused, unable to discern truth from fiction, friend from foe, right from wrong.
So those who watched Donald Trump’s extraordinary press conference alongside Vladimir Putin might well be feeling nauseous, several hours later.
Listening to Trump’s responses about Russian acts of aggression, it was hard to know who was playing the role of the American president. His performance was so nakedly, brazenly pro-Russian, you had to wonder what ranks higher on the Trumpian scale of stupidity: the president’s own intellect or his dim view of ours.
George Orwell conjured up a totalitarian regime where Ignorance Is Strength, but he surely never conceived of this. How can we know that two and two make four, or that the DNC isn’t responsible for its own hacking, or that Vladimir Putin isn’t a bigger American friend than the entire European Union and Nato alliance?
As Trump explained so clearly, when he talks about Russia as a rival, he really means it as a compliment, no matter what your lying ears have told you.
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