The talk of “treason” leaves me cold. Trump is showing less concrete deference and servility toward Russia than every president in my lifetime has shown toward Israel and Saudi Arabia, for example.

And towards Russia.

I can’t wait to see how this will be spun into the narrative of “Trump gave Putin everything he wanted.”

I also can’t wait to see who’ll at least have the courage to mention in passing that the US not giving an inch on the Crimea is an important positive development.

I’ll even watch the news shows tonight to find out. Anybody willing to take bets?

“The posture of President Trump on Crimea is well known and he stands firmly by it,” Mr. Putin said. “He continues to maintain that it was illegal to annex it, our viewpoint is different.”

This is unbelievably great. Trump didn’t hand over the Crimea! He could have done it so easily but he didn’t! Thanks to Mueller who reoriented his attention towards the stupid indictments and occupied his mind with them to the exclusion of everything else.

We are still not out of the woods because, as I said this morning, we don’t know what was really said in the meeting until we see what happens with Mariupol. But no public statement to the effect that the Crimea is legitimately Russian is a huge freaking deal.

I guess Mueller did serve a good purpose after all. Putin didn’t get the victory that he so covets.

Somebody pinch me because I’m afraid I’m dreaming. This is surely too good to be true.

A Johns Hopkins professor was beaten up in Germany:

He was in Germany on Wednesday to give a lecture at Bonn University. He was touring the city with a colleague when a man approached him and asked him if he was Jewish. “I started saying that I have sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians and deeply regret the current depressing state of Islamic-Jewish relations,” when the man starting cursing and following him.

After the stranger hit the professor, police arrived and gave the poor scholar a major beating.

The professor’s ancestors were killed in the Holocaust, so the altercation brought back some really bad memories.

There is a reliable way to find out what happens between Putin and Trump at their one-on-one meeting.

When the meeting was announced, Russia started preparing yet another major offensive against the Ukrainian city of Mariupol. It’s crucial for Russia to take Mariupol because the annexed Crimea is literally dying unless it’s connected to Russia by land. Russians have been trying to create a land way to the Crimea by conquering the Ukrainian territories that stand in the way since the beginning of the war. They eventually ran out of resources and had to stop.

Right now, major military formations are being brought to the border and prepared to strike. If Trump tells Putin what he needs to hear, Putin will strike. Meaning, if the strike happens, we’ll know with great certainty what happened at the meeting.

I know we can’t possibly care because the war in Iraq somehow gave us a convenient excuse not to but if there is anybody who prefers knowledge to empty speculation, here is a good way towards that knowledge.