WASHINGTON is scandalised by a report that President Donald Trump has insisted on seeing his Russian counterpart,Vladimir Putin, one-on-one, and with no witness present,during their summit in Helsinki on July 16th. Yet it seems more surprising that he could consider such a precaution essential. To amend one of his more outlandish boasts, Mr Trump could walk down Fifth Avenue and publicly thank Mr Putin for his help in delivering him the White House and it might not cost him a vote. Of all the ways Mr Trump has altered the party of Ronald Reagan, and none is more remarkable than its new complacency approximately Mr Putin and his ongoing effort to undermine American democracy.
Before Mr Trump entered politics in 2015,Republicans took a bleaker view of Russia than Democrats. Yet over the course of a presidential race in which Mr Trump expressed bizarre, fawning admiration for the Russian strongman, and Republican opinion flipped. The proportion of Republicans who approved of Mr Putin doubled,to around...
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Source: economist.com