“A shameless lie”: Holes poked in Donald Trump’s assertion that he misspoke when praising Putin; Salon, July 17, 2018

Shira Tarlo and Joseph Neese, Salon; “A shameless lie”: Holes poked in Donald Trump’s assertion that he misspoke when praising Putin

"As controversy mounted over his assertion that he believed Russian President Vladimir Putin's word over the findings of the U.S. intelligence community, President Donald Trump attempted to walk back his remarks, in part, by claiming that "other people" could have also meddled in the 2016 presidential election."

This sad, embarrassing wreck of a man; The Washington Post, July 17, 2018

George F. Will, The Washington Post; This sad, embarrassing wreck of a man

"Americans elected a president who — this is a safe surmise — knew that he had more to fear from making his tax returns public than from keeping them secret. The most innocent inference is that for decades he has depended on an American weakness, susceptibility to the tacky charisma of wealth, which would evaporate when his tax returns revealed that he has always lied about his wealth, too. A more ominous explanation might be that his redundantly demonstrated incompetence as a businessman tumbled him into unsavory financial dependencies on Russians. A still more sinister explanation might be that the Russians have something else, something worse, to keep him compliant.

The explanation is in doubt; what needs to be explained — his compliance — is not. Granted, Trump has a weak man’s banal fascination with strong men whose disdain for him is evidently unimaginable to him. And, yes, he only perfunctorily pretends to have priorities beyond personal aggrandizement. But just as astronomers inferred, from anomalies in the orbits of the planet Uranus, the existence of Neptune before actually seeing it, Mueller might infer, and then find, still-hidden sources of the behavior of this sad, embarrassing wreck of a man."

After a stunning news conference, there’s a newly crucial job for the American press; The Washington Post, July 16, 2018

Margaret Sullivan, The Washington Post; After a stunning news conference, there’s a newly crucial job for the American press

"Journalism, writ large, can be proud of the Associated Press’s Jon Lemire and Reuters’s Jeff Mason, who asked well-honed, incisive questions on Monday and asked them in just the right way. (Historical note: Lemire, back in October 2016, was thrown out of a room by Trump’s campaign people, as the candidate called him a “sleazebag” for asking tough questions about sexual misconduct claims against him.)

Mason and Lemire held Trump’s feet to the fire.

If any such pride is to continue in the hours and days ahead, news organizations need to step up to the job of driving home to American citizens the larger picture, too.

It’s not enough to offer such pallid assessments as those we’ve heard too often, that “this is outside the norm,” or “there’s little precedent for what we’re hearing.

Clarity of purpose and moral force are called for. They are not always in ample supply by a too-docile press corps.

Fallows called Monday’s news conference a “moment of truth” for Republican lawmakers

So, too, for American journalists."

We are a deeply stupid country; The Washington Post, July 16, 2018

Dana Milbank, The Washington Post; We are a deeply stupid country

"How foolish are we?

We brainlessly criticized Russia when it invaded Georgia and Ukraine. We idiotically protested when Russia poisoned people in Britain. Like dunces, we punished Russians for killing human rights activists. Morons that we are, we complained when Russia shot down a passenger jet. And then, revealing ourselves to be truly daft and inane, we blamed Russia for interfering in our election.

Standing at Putin’s side Monday, Trump let the world know just how doltish the people are who made this judgment, including the cretins at the CIA and the nitwits on the Senate Intelligence Committee. “I have President Putin; he just said it’s not Russia,” Trump announced. “I don’t see any reason why it would be” Russia."