Donald J. Trump is a very stable genius

We agree https://t.co/7l087Qwmj3

— MFA Russia 🇷🇺 (@mfa_russia) July 16, 2018

The President of the United States:

“I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today,” President  Trump said.

Well, who are you gonna believe?  17 U.S. intelligence agencies and the indictment of 25 Russians by the U.S. Justice Department?  Or a former KGB agent who has a lot to gain by denying that the government he heads did anything nefarious to interfere with U.S. elections?

I wonder if he looked into Putin's soul while they were alone.

As I said today and many times before, “I have GREAT confidence in MY intelligence people.” However, I also recognize that in order to build a brighter future, we cannot exclusively focus on the past – as the world’s two largest nuclear powers, we must get along! #HELSINKI2018

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 16, 2018

Yeah, yeah, yeah, nobody's buying:

“We can no longer completely rely on the White House,” Heiko Maas told the Funke newspaper group. “To maintain our partnership with the USA we must readjust it. The first clear consequence can only be that we need to align ourselves even more closely in Europe.”

He added: “Europe must not let itself be divided however sharp the verbal attacks and absurd the tweets may be.”

Or, as Nicole Wallace, late of the W. Administration, put it:

“Can I just disagree slightly?” began Wallace. “I think the bar was even lower than what you describe. All he had to do was not put on jammies and crawl under the covers with Vladimir Putin and he couldn’t do that. He didn’t have to push back at all for his supporters and all the Republicans we put up before to simply give him a pass. He didn’t even meet his own low bar for not screwing this up.”

And it all comes down to Trump's fragile ego:

“Russia is not our friend. Russia attempted to undermine the fundamentals of our democracy, impugn the reliability of the 2016 election, and sow the seeds of discord among Americans. Our intelligence community, including the current one, concluded this, as did the Majority House Intelligence Committee report, as did our fellow Americans who served on grand juries which returned true bills on two separate occasions. I am confident former CIA Director and current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, DNI Dan Coats, Ambassador Nikki Haley, FBI Director Chris Wray, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and others will be able to communicate to the President it is possible to conclude Russia interfered with our election in 2016 without delegitimizing his electoral success.” 

Yeah, if we can just pry those steel balls out of his hands and replace the strawberry ice cream, Captain Queeg will be alright, I tell ya!

There's one question everyone who works in this administration or supports it must be forced to answer: Do you trust Trump to be Commander in Chief? If the answer is yes, that means they support Putin over the American national security and intelligence communities. Period.

— Dan Rather (@DanRather) July 16, 2018

So mote it be.