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Trump returns a good turn to Gov. McMaster, the first statewide official to enforce him back in 2016: campaigns for him in crunch vote.

If Donald Trump has a motto, it might be this: One good turn deserves another, while one bad turn also deserves another.

Although one begins to doubt this when one sees that Julian Assange is still not free! But then, maybe there is a ‘justifyable’ political reason for that.

The Trump and Putin Extension 

The Russian-US relationship is too important for Presidents Putin and Trump to be meeting in Third Countries instead of in their nation’s capitals.

The 2 biggest nuclear powers have to negotiate before they meet? What happened to working whistle-stop Bush-Putin visits under George Bush Jr? 

Thankfully, Angela Merkel doesn’t believe in summits before Russia and Germany, the EU’s biggest economy meet. She watched one of Germany’s matches in the World Cup in the Russian stadium where it was played.

Merkel has been visiting Moscow frequently, despite serious disagreements with Putin on a number of issues. That’s good for deescalation, and Trump should therefore withstand any pressure not to meet Putin at the Austria summit. 

But meeting Putin only at carefully arranged summits should cease to be the new normal.

The US-Russia relationship is to important to be relegated to choreographed biennial summits. 

Even if there are fundamental disagreements, constructive engagement, not strategically unwise isolation is the way to go. Save such isolations for genocidal mass murderers.