Fire and Fury, by Michael Wolff: on Foreign Policy

Donald Trump: OpEd: Next drama always changed conversation: except Russia

Whatever problems [Trump] might have caused in the past had reliably been supplanted by new events, giving Nothing seemed to move on from those two events [referring to James Comey, the director of the FBI fired for allowing the Russia investigation; and Robert Mueller, Special Counsel investigating Russian collusion in the 2016 election].

Donald Trump: $350B of American arms to Saudis: jobs, jobs, jobs

The Saudis would immediately buy $110 billion's worth of American arms, and a total of $350 billion over ten years. "Hundreds of billions of dollars of investments into the United States and jobs, jobs, jobs," declared the president. Plus, the Americans and the Saudis would together "counter violent extremist messaging, disrupt financing of terrorism, and advance defense cooperation." And they would establish a center in Riyadh to fight extremism.

It was, in dramatic ways, a shift in foreign policy attitude and strategy--and its effects were almost immediate. The president, ignoring, if not defying foreign policy advice, gave a nod to the Saudis' plan to bully Qatar. Trump's view was that Qatar was providing financial support to terror groups--pay no attention to a similar Saudi history.

Jeff Sessions: Met with Russians in 2016, but told Congress he had not

"If it's true, that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russian government in the course of this campaign, what will you do?

Sessions answered: "Senator Franken, I'm not aware of those activities. I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I didn't have--did not have communications with the Russians, and I'm unable to comment on it."

The president's immediate focus was on the question of why anyone believed that communicating with the Russians was bad. There is nothing wrong with that, Trump insisted. As in the past, it was hard to move him off this point and to the issue at hand: A possible lie to Congress.

"Fake news," said the president.