The Week in Washington: “Nothing Short of Treasonous”
“Say that again?” Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats asked, incredulous, when Andrea Mitchell of NBC, interviewing him at the Aspen Security Conference, told him that President Trump had just invited Vladimir Putin to visit Washington this fall. “Okay,” Coats deadpanned. “That’s going to be special.”
It was just another special development in another special week: On Monday, the president shared a podium with Putin in Finland, where he displayed a degree of fealty to the Russian strongman that former CIA director John Brennan described as “nothing short of treasonous.” Even before the presser began, viewers were treated to the spectacle of Sam Husseini, a reporter for the Nation, being hauled out by beefy Russian security guards for the crime of holding up a sign that said, “Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty.”
Among the many signs of accommodation and deference that Trump evinced at the Helsinki shamefest was his response to Putin’s offer to let the Mueller team question indicted Russians in exchange for allowing Russia to interrogate American citizens. Though Trump called this “an incredible offer,” the notion was a bridge too far even for some inveterate Trump-o-philes: On Thursday, in a rare example of bipartisanship, the Senate passed a resolution, 98 to nothing, instructing the president not to honor any requests that would permit Russian officials to interview Americans targeted by Moscow.
On Tuesday, amid a storm of furious criticism, the president, in forced walk-back mode, read a statement that some likened to a hostage video, in which he stated, “I accept our intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election took place.” But then he showed his true colors, ad-libbing, “Could be other people also; there’s a lot of people out there.” He also alleged that when he said he didn’t see any reason why it would be Russia interfering in U.S. elections, he meant to say wouldn’t, which gave rise to a series of jokes as the week wore on. (Okay, just one: Did Melania think her jacket said “I Do Really Care”?) That same day, conservative stalwart George Will, writing in the Washington Post, called the president “a sad embarrassing wreck of a man.”
Even as this embarrassing wreck of a man was fulminating about the perils of alleged slips of the tongue, news came that someone called Maria Butina had been arrested on charges of conspiracy to act as an unregistered agent of the Russian government. Buttina, a 29-year-old Russian national and gun rights activist (an interesting cause, since Russian citizens do not have any gun rights) is accused of trading sex with old right-wing dudes, along with employing less fascinating tactics, to infiltrate conservative political circles. Denied bail—the government thinks she is a flight risk—she now sits in an orange jumpsuit in jail. (As does former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, whose trial on charges of extensive bank and tax fraud is set to begin on Wednesday.)
Remember Karen McDougal, the former Playboy model who claimed she had a lengthy consensual affair with Trump in 2006? Well it turns out that the president and his ex-attorney Michael Cohen had at least one chat about how to pay her hush money, and Cohen, without Trump’s knowledge, recorded the conversation. On Friday, it emerged that the FBI has a copy of this tape, gleaned from their April raid on Cohen’s home and office. This prompted the President to tweet from Bedminster yesterday: “Inconceivable that the government would break into a lawyer’s office (early in the morning) - almost unheard of. Even more inconceivable that a lawyer would tape a client - totally unheard of & perhaps illegal. The good news is that your favorite President did nothing wrong!”
But let us leave you with a reminder that while your favorite president does nothing wrong, over 2,000 migrant children still await reunification with their parents. Though the government faces a court-imposed deadline of July 26 to accomplish this, on Friday the Department of Justice admitted that only 450 children seized at the border were back with their families.
