| President Trump is isolated after his politically disastrous meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki on Monday, in which he refused to acknowledge foreign interference in the 2016 election and proposed a new alliance with a government that Washington views as hostile to U.S. interests. Republican congressional leaders rebuked Trump. The president’s conservative defenders on Capitol Hill were silent or sought to separate themselves from his remarks. Establishment Republicans erupted in anger. Longtime allies sounded the alarm. Trump’s director of national intelligence, Dan Coats, publicly broke with the president while news anchors, analysts and reporters on Fox News hammered the president and dissected the extent of the political damage. And the president did it to himself. Meeting one-on-one with Putin was an idea no one else in Washington favored, and Trump had been warned. For at least a day, Washington was united. 
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© Twitter Among the controversies to come out of Helsinki… - The president had vowed to confront Putin over Russian interference in the 2016 election, but he betrayed his stubborn, and many insist, unfounded skepticism. The pressure was on for Trump to deliver after special counsel Robert Mueller indicted 12 Russian intelligence officers for election crimes, including the hacking of the Democratic National Committee. Instead, Trump offered an equivocal response over whether he trusts Putin over his spy chief Coats, the nation’s senior-most intelligence officer. Coats (R), a former Indiana senator with long ties to Capitol Hill, responded:
“The role of the Intelligence Community is to provide the best information and fact-based assessments possible for the president and policymakers. We have been clear in our assessments of Russian meddling in the 2016 election their ongoing, pervasive efforts to undermine our democracy and we will continue to provide unvarnished and objective intelligence in support of our national security.” - The president said that he discussed with Putin a partnership on a cybersecurity initiative aimed at preventing future election meddling.
“It’s like inviting a criminal to come help you solve a crime, which the criminal committed. I just don’t see the point of inviting the Russians to help us on something that we know they did.” – former CIA officer and Fox News analyst Daniel Hoffman. - Trump suggested that the U.S. and Russia could work together to bring humanitarian relief to Syrians displaced by their country’s civil war. But Putin is propping up Syrian leader Bashar Assad, who uses chemical weapons against his own people in an effort to stay in power. The Syrian civil war, now in its eighth year, is at the root of a refugee crisis about which both leaders professed concerns without mentioning Assad.
“Today’s press conference in Helsinki was one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory. The damage inflicted by President Trump’s naiveté, egotism, false equivalence, and sympathy for autocrats is difficult to calculate. But it is clear that the summit in Helsinki was a tragic mistake.” – Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). The president’s refusal to confront Putin over Russia’s election meddling appears to be embedded in his concern that it diminishes his Electoral College defeat of Hillary Clinton in 2016. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), who has been an ally of the president in seeking to hold FBI and Justice Department (DOJ) officials accountable for their election year investigations, said he hopes that Coats and the rest of Trump’s Cabinet “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." But the president’s performance in Helsinki bolstered the messaging by his political detractors and opened the door for Democrats to intone darkly about his motivations. 
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© Twitter The president fired back at his critics from Air Force One during his return to the states. 
© Twitter In a post-summit interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Trump continued fuming at Mueller and the special counsel investigation. Hannity praised the president’s performance and lashed out at what he described as biased coverage from a news media that is hell-bent on taking the president down. “You’re mainstream media – just blind hatred for President Trump. They’d long predetermined that anything the president does is terrible, devastating and apocalyptic. At this point, they’re just a broken record.” – Hannity Takeaway: The Helsinki summit will become an enduring controversy for the White House and potentially an election year flashpoint. Democrats are already fundraising off Trump’s event with Putin. GOP candidates running in swing districts were among the first to denounce him. Trump served to inflame, rather than quiet, bipartisan instincts in Washington to protect the special counsel and defend Mueller’s eventual findings. Congressional Republicans want to separate themselves from Trump’s belief that the U.S. and Russia are allies during a week in which Trump called the European Union a “foe.” Congress is weighing legislation to serve as a check on the executive branch, and to reaffirm the U.S. commitment to NATO while condemning Russia as a hostile foreign power. For those who want to read more... | 
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