Trump neglects to mention July 4 phone call with Putin

President Trump this hour is flying off to Turkey for the NATO summit. Now, while he's there, we are sort of watching two expected storylines, two very, very different but expected storylines. The first, of course, the really, really unnerving one is that, of course, we're expecting Trump to try to blow up NATO while he's there as best he can. You know, before the White House said anything about it, we learned this weekend from a Kremlin announcement that Donald Trump apparently had an hour and a half long call with Vladimir Putin this weekend. That's apparently how the president of the United States celebrated the 250th anniversary of the founding of our country. He had a long, undisclosed, secret phone call with a foreign dictator he has weird, slavish devotion to and who helped him get elected to the White House in the first place. Again, it was the Kremlin that reported first on the existence of the call. After the Kremlin reported that the call had happened, not the White House, we had to hear from Russia. Trump was then asked about it by reporters and he did then admit today that he'd had the call with Putin right before heading off to NATO. Huh, who called who? So now, based on past experience with Donald Trump and his conversations with Vladimir Putin, which he often doesn't admit to having, because of that past experience of how he has behaved after speaking with Putin in the past, everybody is now expecting Trump to make some bizarre announcement or expecting him to pick some bizarre fight at the NATO summit that reflects whatever it is Putin last said to him before he left. Right? It'll be something that Trump's never talked about before, never shown any native interest or understanding of whatsoever. It'll be some Russian talking point that will then become Trump's, you know, cause at this NATO summit. At least, if past is any prologue, if he behaves at this summit like he has in past events like this. Also, just for your situational awareness on this one, this comes amid somewhat panicked reporting sourced from European intelligence agencies that the other countries in NATO are expecting Putin soon to try some kind of military incursion or even a full-blown military attack against one of the European countries in NATO. Just to test it. Test it. Just try to demonstrate what everybody already suspects to be the case, which is that Trump won't make good on our treaty obligation to defend one of our NATO allies as long as that ally has been attacked by Russia. Any such attack or incursion and non-response from the United States would effectively end NATO once and for all. Right? The whole point of NATO is that the NATO countries commit to defending one another if any of them is attacked. Right? If Trump breaks that commitment, that will end NATO effectively, which of course is Vladimir Putin's fondest dream. So that is the loud static you're hearing. That's the sort of ominous portent that looms over Trump's trip to this NATO summit in Turkey, which he is leaving for right now as we speak.