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President Trump Is a Better Dealbreaker Than Dealmaker
NewYorker | Susan B. Glasser | 05/24/18

At 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday, I was speaking with a senior Administration official involved in the preparations for President Trump's summit with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un. The chances, the official told me, were still "seventy-thirty" that the summit would happen, in Singapore, on June 12th, despite increasingly jittery statements from both sides in recent days. By the time we talked again, after dinner, however, the prospects seemed to be dropping by the minute. The North Koreans had released a new statement in the hour since we had first spoken, calling remarks by Vice-President Mike Pence "ignorant and stupid" and threatening to cancel the meeting and, instead, proceed with a "nuclear-to-nuclear showdown." "I saw that," the official said, referring to the bellicose new statement. "Well, maybe it's down to sixty-forty, but the point is we are planning for it."

Already, though, it was clear that the summit, which so recently had Trump openly musing about his prospects for a Nobel Peace Prize, was in serious doubt, and the official repeatedly returned to the question of the blame game that could ensue if the talks collapsed. He had been reviewing the long history of unsuccessful nuclear negotiations with North Korea, spanning three generations of the Kim family, and had concluded that, no matter what the facts, there was always an aggressive fight to affix responsibility. "Whenever talks have failed with North Korea," the Administration official observed, "it's been because of North Korea."

On Thursday morning, Trump called off the summit, writing in a testy letter to Kim that he was cancelling the meeting, "based on the tremendous anger and hostility displayed in your most recent statement." The blame game, it seemed, had already begun. ... Read more

The Chilling Effect of Trump's War on the FBI
TheAtlantic | Natasha Bertrand | 05/25/18

As the president ramps up his attacks on the law-enforcement and intelligence communities, long-standing damage to key agencies seems inevitable.

President Trump spent his early Wednesday morning, as he does many mornings, on Twitter. This time, he chose to weigh in on the "Criminal Deep State" and the claims that it embedded a spy in his presidential campaign as part of the federal investigation into Russia's election interference.

"They go after Phony Collusion with Russia, a made up Scam, and end up getting caught in a major SPY scandal the likes of which this country may never have seen before!" he wrote.

Much has been written in recent days about Trump's "new" strategy to discredit the Russia investigation. The president has been attacking both the investigators in the Russia probe and the news organizations that cover the investigation, all in an attempt to persuade the public that the probe has been tainted by bias from the start. The frequency of these attacks may be climbing, but Trump's tactics have actually remained remarkably consistent--beginning before he even took office. "Intelligence agencies should never have allowed this fake news to 'leak' into the public," Trump tweeted on January 11, 2017, referring to a dossier published by BuzzFeed that alleged collusion between his campaign team and Russia. "One last shot at me," he added. "Are we living in Nazi Germany?" ... Read more

Edward Snowden on Privacy in the Age of Trump and Facebook | TheIntercept | 05/25/18 | 1hr

Elliott Broidy | wikipedia website

Reporter Tells Of Persian Gulf Rivalries, Hacked Emails And A Mueller Subpoena | NPR Fresh Air | 05/23/18 | 1hr