That went well.

President Donald Trump on Monday said at a briefing with Russian President Vladimir Putin that while he had “great confidence” in the U.S. intelligence community, Putin was “extremely strong and powerful in his denial” that Russia meddled in the 2016 election.

But Obama was born in Kenya and the Central Park 5 were guilty.

The president blamed “both countries” for the strained relationship. When a reporter asked the president if he would denounce Russia’s efforts to interfere in the presidential election, Trump raised the issue of Hillary Clinton’s email server.

“I think it’s a disgrace we can’t get Hillary Clinton’s 33,000 e-mails. 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,” Trump said.

But Obama was born in Kenya and the Central Park 5 were guilty, and but her emails.

Putin said that he was willing to work with the U.S. to “analyze together” any specific material related to election meddling.

“For instance, we can analyze them through the joint working group on cyber security, the establishment of which we discussed during our previous contacts,” he said.

Yes, let’s team up with Putin to work on cyber security. Brilliant plan.

The president has said that he would improve the United States’ relationship with Russia. Though, in a post on Twitter on Monday, the president wrote that the relationship “has NEVER been worse.”

“Our relationship with Russia has NEVER been worse thanks to many years of U.S. foolishness and stupidity and now, the Rigged Witch Hunt,” the president wrote.

Our relationship with Russia has NEVER been worse thanks to many years of U.S. foolishness and stupidity and now, the Rigged Witch Hunt!

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

The Russian ministry of foreign affairs quoted the president’s tweet, and wrote: “We agree.” State news agencies immediately picked up on the president’s comments. A headline in the government-controlled Sputnik News on Monday read: “Trump: Ties With Russia Have Never Been Worse Due to Years of ‘US Foolishness’”

Great great great. Trump is giving us the Putin-eye-view of US-Russia relations.

Trump talks to Piers Morgan for the Daily Mail after his meeting with Brenda:

‘Did you get the feeling she liked you?”

‘Well I don’t want to speak for her, but I can tell you I liked her. So usually that helps. But I liked her a lot.’

‘What were her opening words?’

‘Um, “Welcome”. Just “Welcome”. Just very elegant. And very beautiful. It was really something special.’

‘Did you mention your mother?’

‘I did, I said: “You know, my mother was your big fan. She was born in Stornaway in The Hebrides. And that’s very serious Scotland as you know, there’s no doubt about that.’”

Ah, nice of him to explain about serious Scotland.

Trump revealed the Queen told him the names of all the presidents she had met. ‘Harry Truman was the first president that she got to meet and know, and she went through a whole list. It was a very nice moment, Piers, very nice.’

An easy way to burn up the time.

I asked if they’d discussed Brexit.

‘I did. She said it’s a very – and she’s right – it’s a very complex problem, I think nobody had any idea how complex that was going to be…Everyone thought it was going to be ‘Oh it’s simple, we join or don’t join, or let’s see what happens..’

No, nobody thought that. Nobody. Only Trump is stupid enough to think that, and he thinks it about everything. “Who knew health care was so complicated?” Everyone. Absolutely everyone.

‘When you got in Marine One afterwards with Melania and you talked about what you just experienced with the Queen, it must have been, even for a tough guy like you, quite an emotional thing?

‘It is. To have that meeting I think was really great. We met, but also watching the guard, hearing the sounds, being in that place, that very special place. it was very special there’s no question about that.’

Top special. Top peak high special.

They talked about Brexit and trade.

‘The sceptic in me would say: ‘What is the incentive for America to do a great deal with the United Kingdom?”

‘We would make a great deal with the United Kingdom because they have product that we like. I mean they have a lot of great product. They make phenomenal things, you know, and you have different names – you can say “England”, you can say “UK”, you can say “United Kingdom” so many different – you know you have, you have so many different names – Great Britain. I always say: “Which one do you prefer? Great Britain? You understand what I’m saying?’

‘You know Great Britain and the United Kingdom aren’t exactly the same thing?’

‘Right, yeah. You know I know, but a lot of people don’t know that. But you have lots of different names. The fact is you make great product, you make great things. Even your farm product is so fantastic.’

And that’s not a conversation with little Donny in the first grade, that’s a conversation with the president.

I pressed him on his ‘culture’ comment: ‘People were surprised you said that because America of course was built on immigration. The great culture of America is that it’s full of immigrants. So why do you not think it can work in Europe?’

‘I think it depends where they are,’ he replied. ‘Who they are, educational levels, work levels, I think it depends on a lot of things. I just see what’s happening, the crime is through the roof in some places that have never had crime.’

I think it’s clear what “things” he means.

There’s more, but I’ll spare you.

The usual ethics-obliteration:

“The weather is beautiful, and this place is incredible!” Trump tweeted Saturday morning, promoting his own money-losing property in Turnberry.

“This place is incredible, so spend your money here!”

Says the president of the US about his own golf club.

Today he took a little time to assure us how great he is.

There hasn’t been a missile or rocket fired in 9 months in North Korea, there have been no nuclear tests and we got back our hostages. Who knows how it will all turn out in the end, but why isn’t the Fake News talking about these wonderful facts? Because it is FAKE NEWS!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 15, 2018

Because the facts are not actually wonderful, seeing as how they’re entirely consistent with Kim’s having no intention of altering his nuclear plans in any way.

Heading to Helsinki, Finland – looking forward to meeting with President Putin tomorrow. Unfortunately, no matter how well I do at the Summit, if I was given the great city of Moscow as retribution for all of the sins and evils committed by Russia…

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 15, 2018

Who but Trump would think in terms of being “given” a city? Also “retribution” is not “recompense”; Scavino is only slightly more literate than Trump.

…over the years, I would return to criticism that it wasn’t good enough – that I should have gotten Saint Petersburg in addition! Much of our news media is indeed the enemy of the people and all the Dems…

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 15, 2018

Putin jails and murders journalists, yet here is Trump again calling US journalist “enemies of the people.” The man is poison.

…know how to do is resist and obstruct! This is why there is such hatred and dissension in our country – but at some point, it will heal!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 15, 2018

Not until Trump is gone and forgotten.

Masha Gessen tells us the Trump-Putin date tomorrow is nothing meeting nothing.

The deliberately empty gesture is the ultimate innovation of the Trump Presidency. Beginning with his transition-era announcement of saving American jobs at a Carrier plant—an accomplishment of no consequence for the country as a whole and little, if any, consequence for many Carrier employees—Trump has trafficked in hollow symbols. Each gesture is designed to affirm his image as a dealmaker, even though the deals are devoid of substance at best and costly at worst. In this context, the Trump-Putin summit, a meeting without an agenda, appears entirely logical.

For his part, Putin has spent nearly two decades hollowing out Russian politics, media, and public language. His system rests on rituals devoid of content: elections in which voters have no meaningful choice, court and administrative procedures whose outcomes are preordained, and media that speak with a single, vacant voice. For the last several weeks, these media have been trumpeting the looming summit.

They’re two different versions of emptiness. Putin is intelligent and competent while Trump is neither, but the emptiness they have in common.

For Putin, less discussion in Helsinki is more. His power will be manifested in things not discussed: Russian interference in the election, which Trump is clearly loath to bring up, and human-rights issues that an American leader would traditionally broach at such a meeting. A political prisoner, the Ukrainian film director Oleg Sentsov, who is serving a twenty-year sentence in a Russian prison colony on trumped-up terrorism charges, is in the second month of his hunger strike. He is trying to draw attention to the fate of more than sixty other Ukrainian political prisoners held in Russia. American and international human-rights activists have been waging a hopeless fight to get the issue on the summit agenda—or on the White House radar at all.

That’s a tall order, what with golf and tweeting and watching Fox News. Trump has only so many brain cells available.

It turns out we’re in a cold war with the EU.

In an interview with “CBS Evening News” anchor Jeff Glor in Scotland on Saturday, President Trump named the European Union — comprising some of America’s oldest allies — when asked to identify his “biggest foe globally right now.”

“Well, I think we have a lot of foes. I think the European Union is a foe, what they do to us in trade. Now, you wouldn’t think of the European Union, but they’re a foe. Russia is foe in certain respects. China is a foe economically, certainly they are a foe. But that doesn’t mean they are bad. It doesn’t mean anything. It means that they are competitive,” Mr. Trump said at his golf club in Turnberry, Scotland.

The first “foe” that pops into his head is the EU.

CBS did a transcript of the interview, which doubles as a disturbing cross-section of Trump’s brain.

I don’t expect anything. I frankly don’t expect — I go in with very low expectations. I think that getting along with Russia is a good thing. But it’s possible we won’t. I think we’re greatly hampered by this whole witch hunt that’s going on in the United States. The Russian witch hunt. The — the rigged situation. I watch some of the testimony, even though I’m in Europe, of Strzok. And I thought it was a disgrace to our country. I thought it was an absolute disgrace. Where he wants to do things against me before I was even, I guess before I was even the candidate. It was a disgrace. And then he lied about it. And you know, talking about shutting it down and ‘we, we.’ And he says ‘oh I meant the American people’ all of a sudden you know, he came up with excuses. I guess given to a lawyer, but everybody laughed at it. He was a disgrace to our country. He was a disgrace to the FBI. So when I look at things like that and he led that investigation or whatever you call it. I would say that yeah, I think it hurts our relationship with Russia. I actually think it hurts our relationship with a lot of countries. I think it’s a disgrace what’s going on. And then you look how, you know, partisan it is. You look at what’s going on where — and they know, they know that there’s no way he can get away from those horrible texts that he wrote. So the other side does. But it’s a very partisan thing.

That’s the brain inside the man who can fire the nukes at any time.

The Guardian view on Trump’s visit is that it was doomed from the start, because he doesn’t want what Britain wants.

The president undermined Mrs May before he even left America. He bullied and lied at the Nato summit in Brussels. He then gave an explosive and deliberately destabilising interview to Rupert Murdoch’s Sun on the very day of his arrival in Britain.

Deliberately. I don’t know. Maybe, but maybe it was just more loosely Trump’s unerring taste for the mean and vulgar.

But it was not just the rudeness that mattered – though rudeness does matter, a lot, both in personal and in public things. It was the political impact and consequence. That unmistakable consequence is that Mr Trump’s America can no longer be regarded with certainty as a reliable ally for European nations committed to the defence of liberal democracy. That is an epochal change for Britain and for Europe.

Well Trump’s America never could. If anybody said in January 2017 that America could still be regarded with certainty as a reliable ally for European nations committed to the defence of liberal democracy, anybody wasn’t paying attention. Certainty on that question wasn’t reasonable even then.

The Guardian says Theresa May was that anybody.

Everything about this disastrous and embarrassing presidential visit could have been avoided with more thought and more political sense. But Mrs May and her advisers rushed to Washington in January 2017 to offer a state visit to a president who had barely entered the White House, whose measure as an ally they had not yet properly taken, but who already had it in his character and his power to transform the event from a relatively harmless occasion into a deeply wounding one. It was a shameful and stupid misjudgment. The hostile public reaction was immediate and without precedent. Everything that has happened this week confirms that the Trump visit should not have taken place.

Indeed. We said so at the time. “Why is she all over him like a cheap suit?” we said.

Mrs May should have grasped from the very start that Mr Trump was not an ally when it came to her Brexit strategy. Mr Trump wants to break up international organisations like Nato and the EU. He embraced Brexit on that basis. He saw it as the start of a swing back towards nativist, illiberal, often racist nationalist politics, of which his own election was a further example. He made no secret of his wish to promote other nativist movements on the right. Other European leaders understood this danger, notably Angela Merkel. Mrs May failed to do so. Mrs May rightly wanted a close post-Brexit relationship with the EU, a stance that led in time to the Chequers showdown with her Brexiteer ministers a week ago. But she failed to see that Mr Trump’s US has a stronger commitment to the weakening of the EU than it does to a Britain that wants the EU to prosper.

Out of that failure came the Sun interview. In the interview, Mr Trump expressed hatred for the EU, support for hard Brexit, unwillingness to strike a trade deal with the UK, contempt for Mrs May, support for Boris Johnson, hostility to immigration, and offered his barely coded belief that the UK – and Europe – is “losing your culture”. The interview, its content, its timing, and the fact that it was given to Mr Murdoch’s flagship anti-EU tabloid, was a deliberate hostile act. For Mrs May, fighting to control her party on the dominant issue facing Britain, it was simply a stab in the back. But it wasn’t fundamentally personal. It was a declaration of hostility to Britain and Europe and the values they stand for.

I remain agnostic about how deliberate it was…if only because nothing Trump does is really all that deliberate. He does what he likes to do, and he likes doing things like outraging other heads of governments and doubly so if they’re women, and embracing racism, and trolling liberals.