LATEST NEWS

As you probably know if you’re reading a news blog right now instead of enjoying a summer Friday afternoon, Donald Trump followed up a sensationally deferential summit and press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this week by complaining in a Fox News interview that NATO commitments require the United States to defend allegedly inessential countries like Montenegro. (NATO, of course, has historically existed as a deterrent to potential aggression by the country that’s now Russia.) On Thursday, director of national intelligence Dan Coats more or less said that he didn’t support any of Trump’s recent decisions regarding Putin; today, Secretary of Defense James Mattis took his turn doing the implicit disavowing in a statement about new military aid to Ukraine:

from Stories from Slate https://ift.tt/2JD32F7