Actual conservatives should commend this from Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.): “Insulting and alienating our allies while praising our adversaries will ultimately hurt American workers, families, and national security.”
We should laud the few intellectually honest Republicans. Steve Schmidt: “From his slovenly appearance to his unpreparedness, ignorance and arrogance, he beclowned himself. The Republican majority is filled with cowards who are servile supplicants to the most unfit POTUS ever.”
Next to President Trump, surely the one who appreciates their sycophancy the most is Russian President Vladimir Putin. “U.S. administration officials escalated President Donald Trump’s criticisms of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the global trading system Sunday, heightening tensions with major allies as Washington enters an important stretch of negotiations on several fronts, from China to the North American Free Trade Agreement.”
Russians will applaud Putin for helping Trump, and thereby undermine the West. “Trump’s revenge-tweets from Air Force One back at his Canadian hosts probably did not lose him any friends in Canada, for the basic arithmetic reasons that a few alt-right YouTubers aside, he had no friends in Canada left to lose. . . . He bullies traditional friends and allies; he cringes to adversaries, dictators, and potential funding sources for Trump enterprises. Bullying the G7 was the weekend’s story; cringing to North Korea—and behind it, China—will be the story of the week ahead.”
And Republicans cheer this sort of deliberate ignorance. “As President Trump prepares to meet Kim Jong-un of North Korea to negotiate denuclearization, a challenge that has bedeviled the world for years, he is doing so without the help of a White House science adviser or senior counselor trained in nuclear physics. . . . As a businessman and president, Mr. Trump has proudly been guided by his instincts. Nevertheless, people who have participated in past nuclear negotiations say the absence of such high-level expertise could put him at a tactical disadvantage in one of the weightiest diplomatic matters of his presidency.”
Candidates who tout Trump will not win outside deep-red enclaves. “Republicans haven’t won a statewide race in Virginia since 2009, and GOP leaders have all but written off their chances of changing that trend in this year’s Senate race. The state’s Republicans will select their Senate candidate in Tuesday’s primary. The best-known candidate, Corey Stewart, built his brand on defending Confederate icons.”
Kenneth W. Starr offers praise for special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. “It’s definitely a serious case. We know that from the indictments and guilty pleas that have already been obtained. So what we’re seeing is the special counsel Bob Mueller whom I know and whom I greatly respect, just following the evidence as he sees it.”