By the by, Trump managed to tie his own weekly record for most mistakes, misstatements and falsehoods - the Toronto Star counted 57 - including his claim that the U.S. provides 90 percent of NATO’s funding (it’s actually 22 percent), that Russia provides 60-70 percent of Germany’s energy (more like 7-9 percent), that he didn’t insult Britain’s Theresa May (he did), that, in his honor, the queen reviewed her first military guard in 70 years (she does so on a regular basis) and in his particularly peculiar branding of Montenegro as an “aggressive” nation unworthy of NATO protection (they last fought in the Yugoslav wars of the early '90s, and before that, in World War II). And that’s a modest sampling. [...]
Some of the attacks from former top intelligence community officials, even if one accounts for their association with past Democratic administrations, were admittedly harsher than anything ever hurled at past presidents. Former CIA Director John Brennan said Trump’s behavior was “treasonous," his predecessor Leon Panetta opined that “the Russians must have something on him” and former White House counter-terrorism adviser Richard Clarke said that Trump was a “controlled Russian asset.” But many mainstream Republicans were also shocked, with usually sycophantic Fox News presenters lashing out at the president, describing his Helsinki performance as “shameful” and “disgusting.” One wonders if the breach with his media hinterland merits comparisons to Walter Cronkite’s critical February report on the faltering Vietnam War, to which President Lyndon B. Johnson is said to have reacted - though perhaps he didn’t - with the prescient observation: “If I’ve lost Walter, I’ve lost Middle America." [...]
But therein lies the rub. If Trump really owes Putin, and certainly if he is a Kremlin stooge, as many Democrats asserted this week, why does he go to such lengths to prove it? Why does he make such an effort to look like he’s guilty? Trump refuses to say a bad word about the Russians. He ignores the Kremlin’s crimes and belittles its sins, spouts fulsome praise at strongman Putin, does his best to undermine the Mueller investigation and freely admitted that he fired FBI Director James Comey because of the Russian probe. Even Putin, who knows a thing or two about handling moles from his time at the KGB, appeared ill at ease with Trump’s overstated fawning. He emphasized ongoing U.S.-Russian disagreements and vouched that Trump really doesn’t trust him one bit. [...]
Stupidity, Cipolla asserted, has immense power: Intelligent people tend to underestimate its prevalence and are often helpless in fighting it. Acts of stupidity are powerful because, by definition, they are illogical, unreasonable and unexpected. The third of the five basic laws of stupidity outlined by Cipolla defines a stupid person as one “who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.” On the assumption that Putin doesn’t really own Trump, it’s an accurate description of the president’s achievements over the past week.
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