The Washington Post has a story saying the summit plan was much different than the disaster that rolled out yesterday:
Ahead of the meeting, staffers provided Trump with some 100 pages of briefing materials aimed at laying out a tough posture toward Putin, but the president ignored most of it, according to one person familiar with the discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose internal deliberations. Trump’s remarks were “very much counter to the plan,” the person said.
“Everyone around Trump” was urging him to take a firm stance with Putin, according to a second person familiar with the preparations. Before Monday’s meeting, the second person said, advisers covered matters from Russia’s annexation of Crimea to its interference in the U.S. elections, but Trump “made a game-time decision” to handle the summit his way.
Boy, did he ever. I think Trump has his own version of “My Way” that plays in his head on a constant loop: “Regrets, I don’t have none/Because I am, the perfect human/My face, orange as the sun/It sets the whole world, all a-bloomin’ ...” Something like that.
A couple of other nuggets from the story that won’t surprise anyone who’s been paying attention:
The president spent much of the weekend “growling,” in the words of one White House official, over the Justice Department’s indictment Friday of 12 Russian intelligence officials for interfering in the 2016 election. He fretted that the release of the indictments just before the meeting could hurt him politically, the official said.
...
Trump also made it clear that he was more excited to sit down with the Russian president than he had been to visit with NATO allies earlier in the week in Brussels.
“He loved the summit with Kim Jong Un,” the White House official said, referring to the North Korean leader with whom Trump met last month in Singapore. “He thinks he can sit down eye to eye with these guys, flatter them and make a deal.”
I’m still down with the hypothesis that Putin and the Oligarchs completely own Trump, that they’ve kept him alive financially and he fears the removal of his cash flow (and the possible fatal consequences that come from crossing Uncle Vlad). But I still have to wonder — if it were something like that, wouldn’t his collusion be more … competent? There are ways to throw cold water on the Russian meddling story without looking so obviously like you are throwing cold water on the Russian meddling story. He could be a puppet without looking so much like a puppet. Maybe it really is that his ego can't stand the thought of anyone tipping the scales in his favor. His election win has to be his and his alone, the great triumph, his victory against anyone who ever criticized him or thought he was anything less than the greatest Great Man who ever was or shall be.
Of course, with this guy, it’s probably both. They own him, but his ego can’t take it. The dissonance is ripping apart an already weak mind.