From the looks of it, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin have been enjoying a jolly ol’ time together at the G-20 summit. Seated beneath their countries’ flags, they engaged in acute manspreading and warmly shook hands as Putin took the measure of the autocratic sucker beaming before him. Trump also tweeted enthusiastically about the meeting, implying that he would work with the Russian dictator to form a Cyber Security Unit. But someone probably told him that was a bad idea: now, he’s backpedaling with all the speed his simpleton brain can muster.
Early Sunday morning, EST, Trump indicated that he and Putin—having reached an understanding about that pesky election hacking—would collaborate on measures to make elections more secure.
As Politico reports, this tomfool scheme was not met with favor.
“It’s not the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard, but it’s pretty close,” South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham told NBC’s Meet the Press.
Meanwhile, Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin referred to the Cyber Security Unit as “a very significant accomplishment.”
But late Sunday evening, it seems a majority of Trump’s advisors convinced him that he had been misguided—or, perhaps, at least tweeted too soon. And since Trump is always tweeting he promptly addressed criticisms in a barely-lucid dispatch.
On the one hand, Trump knowingly—and treasonously—colluding with Putin is terrifying and could lead to disastrous outcomes. But if he actually believed that cooperating with Russia was a nimble diplomatic move—if he was in fact that doltish—then that would be frightening as well.