Q: What do the following wildly diverse people and institutions have in common: MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and Fox News’ Shepard Smith, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, The New York Times and The Weekly Standard, The National Review and the Daily Kos?
A: All agree that Donald Trump’s July 16 meeting and press conference with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki were, in Senator John McCain’s words, “a tragic mistake,” if not “treasonous” (the term used by former CIA director John Brennan). McCain declared that “the damage inflicted by President Trump’s naivety, egotism, false equivalence, and sympathy for autocrats is difficult to calculate.” The chorus singing this same tune now ranges from liberal columnists like Charles M. Blow and Tom Friedman to unrepentant neo-cons like Max Boot, Republican Hawks like Newt Gingrich, and pretty much every former head of the CIA, DIA, and NSA still alive. A remarkable amalgam of left- and right-leaningpols and pundits, whose unity, however temporary, demands explanation.
On the surface, what accounts for the wide-ranging opposition to Trump’s “softness” toward Russia is a combination of contempt for the presidential Orange-utan and old-fashioned patriotism. Trump demonstrated once again in Helsinki that he is poorly prepared, egomaniacal, impetuous, and overly trusting of fellow authoritarians. And, as Brennan and others opined, he…