Darkness Visible

Carl Bernstein:

“So, we are in an extraordinary moment in which we will see how the wounds in the past couple of days that Trump has inflicted on himself, whether they may be somewhat mortal, be hard to imagine given what he’s survived and thrived on so far, but he is bleeding badly in front of all of us,” Bernstein said. “And we are watching a horrible spectacle play out in which we don’t know exactly whether we can trust the loyalty of the president of the United States whether through incompetence, whether through incoherence or whether through nefarious relationships. We just don’t know the answer.”

He noted that it’s impossible to know what occured in the body language and the winks between the two men.

“Can you imagine that here we are talking about whether or not the president of the United States can be trusted with a despot, a tyrannical murder rogue thug and the president of the United States we’re unsure of perhaps whose side he’s on or whether he’s ambiguous whose side he’s on,” he closed.

The interesting point is:  we have Putin's version of what they talked about privately.  Trump hasn't said a word about it.  Given the debacle of the press conference, how much worse was the private meeting?  If we're unsure whose side Trump is on, shouldn't we be inquiring into what we don't know and what he hasn't told us?  Or hasn't told his security advisors, for that matter?

“Katy, you asked if [Trump] had consumed the media coverage,” NBC News Pentagon correspondent Hans Nichols said. “He did not make his way to the West Wing until well after noon today, that gave him plenty of time to digest the media and perhaps watch a little cable TV.”

“And what’s interesting is that he had an intelligence briefing on his schedule yesterday, this morning, the intelligence briefing was no longer there and no reason given for why that changed,” Tur noted.

“Just scrubbed from his schedule,” Nichols noted. “Officially, that was on the schedule, and then it wasn’t — and that is where we stand the now as the president is going to about to try to talk to the press the American people about just what his intentions were with Vladimir Putin.”

In addition to canceling his Presidential Daily Briefing, the commander-in-chief also blew off a planned lunch with Vice President Mike Pence.