Trump will pander to Xi just as he has to Putin
Robert Brinkley, who was our man in Ukraine, raised the issue of Russian kompromat and referred to Trump as “an agent of Russian influence”; but the meeting’s host at the Centre for European Reform, Ian Bond (former ambassador to Latvia), responded — reasonably, I thought — that it was the consequences of the US president’s behaviour rather than its possible causes that should most trouble us: Trump truly is the Kremlin’s most useful idiot.