Newsletter: Trump’s Russia walk-back exercise program
Good morning. I’m Paul Thornton, and it is Saturday, July 21, 2018. It’s about to get miserable again weather-wise in Los Angeles — here’s why. On that positive note, let’s take a look back at the week in Opinion.
I liken President Trump’s bizarre inability this week to make up his mind on Russia’s election meddling — where one day, he sides with Vladimir Putin, and the next, some less erratic member of his staff reminds the stable genius what he really believes — to that slapping scene in “Chinatown,” where Jack Nicholson’s Jake Gittes repeatedly strikes Faye Dunaway’s Evelyn Cross Mulwray as she can’t seem to produce an answer that makes sense about the identity of her (spoiler alert!) sister-slash-daughter. But in this case we get the unnerving sense that nothing Trump says about his one-on-one meeting with Putin in Helsinki on Monday is true.
Times Editorial Board members Jon Healey and Michael McGough, writing for the Opinion section’s live blog Enter the Fray, put the president’s daily walk-backs in a different light: They say all this movement must be great cardio for the famously exercise-averse commander in chief:
We should start a regular feature here on Enter the Fray: Take a Walk Back with President Trump.
This week alone, the president and his aides had to “clarify” (read: contradict) his remarks at a news conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki that gave equal credence to U.S. intelligence agencies and Russia’s murderous strongman on the issue of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential race.
Then he and other administration officials had to “clarify” his statement to reporters that Russia wasn’t still targeting the United States.
On Thursday, the White House had to bat down yet another comment, made first by Trump in Helsinki and then given credence by Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders in Washington. This time it was Trump’s endorsement of Putin’s idea to have U.S. officials interrogated in exchange for allowing special counsel Robert S. Mueller III to sit in as Russian authorities interrogate the 25 Russians charged in his investigation into election meddling....
U.S. lawmakers moved quickly to heap scorn on the plan, with Senate Democrats readying a resolution calling on the administration to “refuse to make available any current or former diplomat, civil servant, political appointee, law enforcement official or member of the Armed Forces of the United States for questioning by the government of Vladimir Putin.” Before the Senate could vote on the nonbinding measure, however, the White House issued a statement walking back Trump’s previous endorsement.
Hey, California Republicans, stop covering for Trump. He’s wrong about so many things that it’s hard to know where to begin — family separation, NATO, Russia, trade, take your pick. Trump’s unfitness for his job became all the more apparent this week after his disastrous summit with Putin, a national crisis that demands a unified Congress’ response. Sadly, says The Times Editorial Board, few of California’s Republican members of the House, some of them very powerful, could muster a rebuke of the president. L.A. Times
Only a blue wave can save the republic now. Republicans in Congress sound concerned about Russia and election meddling, but they’re doing nothing to contain the biggest threat to our country right now: President Trump. Former U.S. diplomat Elizabeth Shackelford, who resigned from the State Department last year in protest of the administration, encourages the president’s critics to do all they can to flip Congress to Democratic control. L.A. Times
Go home, LeBron — we already have Lonzo. Stay with me here, because the crude sports analogy works well: The Lakers’ acquisition of LeBron James — the older, established, extremely wealthy star of his sport — at the expense of homegrown basketball talent Lonzo Ball typifies California’s broader habit of favoring wealth and talent from out of state instead of investing in the young people we already have, writes Joe Mathews. Sacramento Bee
The loony “3 Californias” initiative is off the ballot. The San Francisco Chronicle’s editorial board dismisses the idea pointedly: “A severed Northern California, a sliced-away Central Valley joined with Southern California, and a contrived coastal segment: None of it makes sense.” The Times Editorial Board agrees.
Israel’s new “nation-state” law is an assault on its Arab citizens. Everybody already knows Israel is a Jewish state, a fact that has existed tenuously with the other reality that 20% of the country’s citizens are Arabs who deserve to be treated as equals. But the new law in Israel that defines the country as the “nation-state” for Jewish people and downgrades the status of the Arabic language will only make matters worse, says The Times Editorial Board. L.A. Times
Reach me: paul.thornton@latimes.com