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July 2017

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Good News and Bad News From Poland By David P. Goldman

By on July 8th, 2017

President Trump’s speech yesterday in Warsaw was better than inspiring. It was calculating and subtle, and sent strong messages to both our friends and adversaries. The crowd of cavilers who abhor Trump as an ignoramus should hang their heads in shame.

The president said:

We are confronted by another oppressive ideology — one that seeks to export terrorism and extremism all around the globe. America and Europe have suffered one terror attack after another. We’re going to get it to stop … While we will always welcome new citizens who share our values and love our people, our borders will always be closed to terrorism and extremism of any kind.

…

Today, the West is also confronted by the powers that seek to test our will, undermine our confidence, and challenge our interests. To meet new forms of aggression, including propaganda, financial crimes, and cyberwarfare, we must adapt our alliance to compete effectively in new ways and on all new battlefields.

We urge Russia to cease its destabilizing activities in Ukraine and elsewhere, and its support for hostile regimes — including Syria and Iran — and to instead join the community of responsible nations in our fight against common enemies and in defense of civilization itself.

There is a double message to Moscow here.

First, the United States has drawn a red line at the Polish border, making clear that America will shed blood if need be to defend its Polish ally. Second, the line is drawn around Poland, not Ukraine. The United States is prepared to reach an agreement with Russia over Ukraine if Russia stops destabilizing Ukraine and if it leashes its Iranian dog. The United States has sent a clear message — as the president reminded his Warsaw audience — that it will not tolerate the tolerance of terror by the Saudis or other Sunni allies. We expect Russia to do the same with its Shi’ite allies.

That is tough, but realistic. Trump is willing to negotiate with the Russians, but from a position of strength, in solidarity with our allies who have suffered historically from Russian aggression, and with unambiguous lines in the sand. It was a brilliantly crafted speech, the slickest as well as the most inspiring foreign policy address of any American president since Ronald Reagan.

Trump also gave Poland and other Eastern European countries critical backing in their fight against the European Union’s attempt to force them to accept their quota of Muslim migrants.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that Poland itself is probably past the demographic point of no return. The president intoned:

While Poland could be invaded and occupied, and its borders even erased from the map, it could never be erased from history or from your hearts. In those dark days, you have lost your land but you never lost your pride.

So it is with true admiration that I can say today, that from the farms and villages of your countryside to the cathedrals and squares of your great cities, Poland lives, Poland prospers, and Poland prevails.

Maybe not so much. With a total fertility rate of just 1.3 children per female, Poland is headed for demographic disaster. Poland today has one retiree for every four working-age citizens. By 2045 there will be one retiree for every two working-age citizens, and the burden of elderly dependence will crush the Polish economy. In a century, the Polish population will shrink to insignificance:

Only one major country has come back from the demographic brink, and that is Russia. At the collapse of Communism, Russian women were bearing just 1.1 children on average. That has since risen to almost 1.8, just below the American level. The demographers have not yet offered us an adequate explanation of this unprecedented turnaround, but I suspect that it coincides with a revival of religion in the former fortress of atheism. Some 80% of Russian women now identify as Orthodox Christian compared to 30% just after the collapse of Communism, according to the Pew Forum.

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FOREIGN POLICY, MEDIA Comments turned off

Trump defends the West — and the Left screams foul Rich Lowry

By on July 8th, 2017

Imagine that President Trump gave a speech praising a strong Europe.

Imagine that he called forthrightly on Russia to stop its aggression in Ukraine and join the community of responsible nations.

Imagine that he embraced the mutual-defense commitment, so-called Article 5, of NATO.

Imagine that he extolled the role of women in our society.

Imagine that he said we share the hope of every soul to live in freedom.

Imagine that he celebrated the free press and ceaseless innovation and a spirit of inquiry and self-criticism.

That’s the speech that Trump gave in Warsaw during his European trip for the G-20. It was easily the best of his presidency — well-written and moving, soaked in Polish history and grounded in Western values. And yet it has been attacked for, as one liberal outlet put it, sounding “like an alt-right manifesto.”

The address also got a lot of praise, but the criticism was telling. Some of it was from commentators who simply can’t abide Trump, but a lot of it reacted against core elements of the speech.

It was unabashedly nationalist. Not in a bumptious way, but one that acknowledged the importance of “free, sovereign and independent nations.” Trump used Poland’s story to augment the theme. He talked of a Polish nation that is “more than 1,000 years old,” that endured despite its borders being wiped out for a century, that withstood a Communist assault on its freedom, its faith and very identity.

It emphasized the importance of culture. Trump called Poland a “faithful nation.” He talked of that hinge point of history in 1979 when Pope John Paul II preached a sermon in Warsaw and a crowd of a million chanted, “We want God.”
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He said that large economies and fearsome weapons aren’t enough for our survival; we need “strong families and strong values,” and “bonds of history, culture and memory.”

It argued that we must demonstrate civilizational self-confidence, the will to defend our values.

Finally, it unapologetically invoked “the West,” which, Trump noted, writes symphonies, rewards brilliance, values freedom and human dignity and has created a truly great community of nations.

All of this strikes the ears of Trump’s progressive critics the wrong way. They believe that nations are best constrained by multinational or supra-national institutions like the EU. They think that all the non-material things that lend our lives meaning — God, family, national loyalty — are atavistic, overrated or best not spoken of too much.

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Paris police round up thousands of refugees camping in the streets By Rick Moran

By on July 8th, 2017

The refugee crisis in France is getting worse as authorities say that up to 500 migrants arrive in Paris every week and join makeshift encampments that pose a “security and public health risk” to residents.

The camps are situated on the sidewalks near a refugee processing center. Paris police are now conducting round-ups of the migrants, moving them to temporary lodgings all over the city.

Reuters:

The migrants were being escorted onto buses to be taken to temporary lodgings such as gymnasium buildings in Paris and areas ringing the capital. Live TV footage showed what appeared to be a peaceful evacuation.

Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said earlier this week the situation was getting out of hand with more than 400 arrivals a week in the area.

“It’s always the same problem,” he said on Thursday. “First off you say ‘I’m going to open a center for 500 people’ and next thing you know you have 3,000 or 4,000 people and you’re left having to sort the problem out.”

He has been asked by President Emmanuel Macron to produce a plan to accelerate processing of asylum requests with a view to deciding within six months who will be granted refugee status and who gets sent back.

The camp in Paris has swollen despite the creation of two new centers by Paris City Hall to register and temporarily house migrants arriving in the city.

Local authorities have also reported a rise in recent weeks in the number of migrants roaming the streets of the northern port city of Calais, where a sprawling illegal camp was razed to the ground last November and its inhabitants dispatched to other parts of France.

Calais, from which migrants hope to reach Britain, has come to symbolize Europe’s difficulty in dealing with a record influx of men, women and children who have fled their native countries.

Last year, police cleared a huge refugee camp outside Calais, but it didn’t do much good. Another one has sprung up to take its place.

As for Paris, police made no mention of it, but the city has become a “no-go” zone for tourists because of the increase in crime. It doesn’t help that authorities allow the refugees to sleep and congregate on the sidewalks in the middle of the city. Spreading the problem out by moving the migrants to various places around the city is likely to increase crime in those areas, too.

France has been stricter than some European countries in granting asylum requests, but the number of refugees keeps climbing. Immigration was not the top issue in the recent presidential and parliamentary elections, but it’s still there as a problem. Eventually, it’s probable that, like almost everywhere else in Europe, there will be a voter backlash. What, then, will new president Macron do?

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BOOKS Comments turned off

Just Say No to Naomi Klein By Norman Rogers

By on July 8th, 2017

Naomi Klein has made a career giving guidance to the dumbest segment of the juvenile left. Each new generation brings a new crop of kids susceptible to the siren song of Marxism. With movie-star looks and a fake humble act, Klein repackages Marxism, explaining to her star-struck acolytes, most of whom probably never heard of Marx, that evil billionaires and scheming corporate bosses are conspiring to further oppress every oppressed group. Her act sells millions of books. Her mama didn’t raise any dumbbells.

Her latest book is No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need. The book was hurriedly written so that it would be published before people became used to having Trump as president. Klein describes Trump’s election as a naked corporate takeover. Apparently, much of the corporate establishment was only pretending to be in Hillary’s camp.

Klein explains the world by shoehorning the real world into Marxist categories. Some of the people in Trump’s Cabinet are wealthy – proof for Klein that scheming capitalists have taken over the government.

Klein is a dual American-Canadian citizen. Her parents fled the U.S. for Canada in 1967 to escape military service and jail.

According to Klein, the meaning of Trump’s election is that a “gang of predatory lenders, planet-destabilizing polluters, war and ‘security’ profiteers joined forces to take over the government and protect their ill-gotten wealth.”

What do predatory lenders and planet-destabilizing polluters have in common? Perhaps the predatory lenders enable people to buy cars so that the planet-destabilizing polluters can sell gasoline – obviously a sinister conspiracy. Planet-destabilizing pollution is a political slogan, not a scientific category.

Lockheed Martin, presumably a war profiteer, made 8% profit on sales. Apple, presumably not a war profiteer, made 21%. It must be that the profits of war are depressed.

The far left, when it obtains political power, always suppresses its opponents. In the U.S., if the hard left obtained power, the opposition would be demonized as racists or promoters of hate. Their fate would be a prison camp or worse. Thugs would be utilized to beat up or kill opposition figures and reporters.

When the left does not hold power, it holds itself out as the protector of wronged people and wronged groups. That is a strategy for building political support. Naomi Klein constantly invokes a long list of groups supposedly wronged by capitalism.

Here is how Klein, bizarrely, describes Trump’s electoral appeal:

It is this complex mix of factors that allowed Trump to come along and say: I will champion the beleaguered working man. I will get you those manufacturing jobs back. I’ll get rid of these free trade agreements. I’ll return your power to you. I’ll make you a real man again. Free to grab women without asking all those boring questions. Oh, and the most potent part of Trump’s promise to his base: I will take away the competition from brown people, who will be deported or banned, and Black people, who will be locked up if they fight for their rights. In other words, he would put white men safely back on top once again.

This is a clear attempt, a pathetic attempt, to incite racial animus if not a race war. White men are parodied as mean-spirited and lording it over women, brown people, and black people. This is Klein dropping the sweet and humble act and baring her fangs. If only she and her allies can tear the country apart by inciting racial animus, there might be an opening for the left to obtain political power.

Fortunately, Trump was elected president, and Naomi Klein is a lefty gadfly.

Global warming/climate change is a natural leftist cause. If we aren’t swearing off fossil fuels, it must be due to the sinister influence of corporate America. So, to get the maximum political mileage, global warming is depicted as unquestioned science – something like the law of gravity. Given that, if we are not eliminating carbon dioxide emissions, it must be because capitalist forces are selfishly, for profit, spreading confusion and lobbying against saving the world.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

New York City Has 1,800 Public Schools. Why Not Let Parents Pick? Students can transfer out of 88 struggling schools, but many are trapped in merely mediocre ones. By Mene Ukueberuwa

By on July 8th, 2017

As the final bells of the academic year sounded in New York City’s public schools two weeks ago, thousands of students and parents were dreaming of a better education down the block. Through a citywide program called Public School Choice, parents can apply to move their children from a poorly performing school to a better one. But the city Education Department’s stringent policy means that many of these requests are rejected. Last year about 5,500 families applied, but the city approved transfers for only 3,500 students.

Soula Adam, a single mother in Astoria, Queens, knows the disappointment of the rest. For years she tried to help her son Harry escape what she felt were lackluster teachers at P.S. 70, the same neighborhood school that she had attended as a girl. “I liked P.S. 122 on Ditmars Boulevard,” she recalls, explaining that the school was more rigorous and only two miles away. But she knew the city’s transfer guidelines would never allow her son into P.S. 122. “If you’re not zoned,” she says, “you couldn’t get in.”

Harry tried to win a spot at a charter school through an open lottery, but his number wasn’t called. Eventually he earned a scholarship to Saint Demetrios Astoria, a Greek Orthodox school close to home. That private generosity opened the door for the Adams, but thousands of other public-school pupils remain stuck.

Transfers between New York City schools first became available in 2003, after the No Child Left Behind Act required districts nationwide to create options for students whose schools lagged behind federal standards for progress. For more than a decade, however, the Education Department permitted moves only for students with specific hardships, such as health issues or one-way commutes over 75 minutes. Former Schools Chancellor Joel Klein defended this restriction on transfers for the sake of choice. “The system doesn’t work that way,” he told the Observer in 2014. “By definition, some kids get better choices.”

But last year the city began allowing “guidance” transfers, available to students who are not “progressing or achieving academically or socially.” The update received favorable notice from school-choice advocates, but the kicker is in the fine print: Transfers are still open only to students in 5% of New York City’s schools—the 88 designated as “priority” because of perennially poor performance. But nonpriority schools can still be bad, with as few as a quarter of test-takers proficient in English and math. Students at these schools have no recourse to move out and up.

Consider a tale of two elementary schools: P.S. 173 (Fresh Meadows) and P.S. 187 ( Hudson Cliffs ), less than a mile apart in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan. Both are zoned schools with no admission criteria beyond place of residence, and yet the share of students passing state exams in 2016 was 30 percentage points higher at Hudson Cliffs. The only thing that stops a bright student at Fresh Meadows from attaining success up the street is the city’s red tape.

In the long term, the free flow of students enabled by a reformed transfer program would put pressure on underperforming schools, as students left and budgets tightened. Successful schools wouldn’t be burdened by the influx of newcomers, since New York’s funding algorithm allocates enough money each year to cover the marginal cost of each additional student.

Critics may say the way to fix a bad school isn’t to cut its funding. But why should fear of tight budgets hold back students who are ready to succeed? Moreover, many of the city’s specialized private schools that serve low-income students have delivered impressive results with as little as half the funding per student as traditional public schools. CONTINUE AT SITE

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FOREIGN POLICY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

When Donald Met Vlad We’ll learn what Putin thinks of Trump by what he tries to get away with.

By on July 8th, 2017

By the time President Trump sat down in Hamburg, Germany with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, the media hype had built the meeting into virtually the second coming of the Reykjavik Summit. The agreement that fell out of the Hamburg bilateral was the announcement of a cease-fire in southwestern Syria.

Any cessation of hostilities in Syria is welcome, and we can hope it will become the basis for similar agreements on the country’s more complex northern war fronts. But that would require Mr. Putin to abandon his grand strategy for re-establishing Russian influence across the Middle East, in partnership with Iran and Syria. That would take a real summit and more planning than went into the Hamburg sit-down.

Messrs. Trump and Putin brought only their foreign ministers into the meeting, suggesting that the primary goal here was to take each other’s measure. Both men famously pride themselves in their ability to size up adversaries—Mr. Trump as a negotiator of real-estate deals and Mr. Putin as a former KGB recruiter of foreign agents.

The American and Russian sides also bring distinctly different intentions into meetings like this one. For the American side, prodded by an insistent media narrative, the goal is to discover areas of possible “cooperation.” In Mr. Putin’s world, such a meeting has one purpose: to discover if he will be able to press Russian interests forward without significant pushback from the U.S. President.

Mr. Putin concluded that Barack Obama would pose minimal resistance, and so he seized Crimea, invaded eastern Ukraine and adopted Syria’s Bashar Assad. He’s still in all three places.

We can’t guess what Mr. Putin made of Donald Trump. Mr. Trump for his part enjoys his reputation for unpredictability, and he confirmed this by pressing Mr. Putin on Russia’s efforts to disrupt the U.S. presidential election. Mr. Putin denied any meddling, but the Russian now has a new element in the Trump equation to think about.

Until now, Mr. Trump has let the Russian leader believe their dealings might be man-to-man. But by raising Russian interference in a U.S. election, Mr. Trump made clear to Vlad that he’ll be dealing with the President of all the American people. That sounds like a positive outcome.

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FOREIGN POLICY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Trump, Putin Spar on Hacks, Act on Syria Two leaders hold highly anticipated bilateral in Hamburg amid questions about Russian interference in U.S. elections, policies in Syria and Ukraine By Peter Nicholas

By on July 8th, 2017

HAMBURG—Coming face-to-face in a highly anticipated meeting, the American and Russian presidents disagreed Friday over election interference and about the best approach to North Korea, but made tentative progress toward curbing the bloodshed in Syria’s long-running war.

President Donald Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin spoke for more than two hours Friday on the sidelines of the Group of 20 leading nations summit in Germany. The meeting went so much longer than planned that first lady Melania Trump looked in at one point to see if she could coax them to wrap up.

It didn’t work. They kept talking another hour.

“It was an extraordinarily important meeting—so much for us to talk about,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who was in the room, told reporters afterward. “And it was a good start.”

Mr. Trump’s interest lay not only in speaking in detail with the Russian leader, but also in trying to shape the narrative that emerged about the meeting. Toward that end, Mr. Tillerson provided a round-by-round account of the conversation, answering questions from reporters about a spectrum of international issues.

The first issue raised by Mr. Trump was one that has vexed him most at home: whether Russia interfered with the 2016 presidential race to help him win. Before Friday, it was far from clear Mr. Trump would mention it at all. As recently as the day before, Mr. Trump cast doubt on the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia interfered in the election and was prepared to do it again.

“No one really knows for sure,” Mr. Trump said.

In private, however, the president told Mr. Putin that Americans are upset about Russia’s actions and want them to stop, Mr. Tillerson said. The president invoked a bill passed 98-2 by the Senate last month that would slap new sanctions on Russia in reprisal. The measure is now pending in the House.

Mr. Trump’s message: Russia could pay a higher price unless it keeps out of America’s democratic elections, Mr. Tillerson said.

“The president pressed President Putin on more than one occasion regarding Russian involvement,” Mr. Tillerson recounted.

Mr. Putin denied that Russia played a role. With the two men at odds, they agreed they wouldn’t let the issue poison the overall relationship between their countries. CONTINUE AT SITE

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HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

BLOCKCHAIN FOR GOVERNMENT: A CHEAT SHEET BY CHUCK BROOKS AND DAVID LOGSDON

By on July 8th, 2017

Chuck Brooks serves as vice president for government relations and marketing for Sutherland Government Solutions and as chairman of the CompTIA New and Emerging Technologies Committee.

David Logsdon is the senior director of public advocacy for CompTIA.

The General Services Administration recently announced its plans to accept quotes from companies for implementing blockchain and other automated machine-learning technologies to enhance GSA’s Multiple Award Schedules FASt Lane program. The program focus is to speed up the process review time for adding products and services to contract vehicles.

The RFQ states, “GSA seeks to intelligently automate the current MAS FASt Lane contract proposal review processes by utilizing distributed ledger technology, automated machine learning, and/or artificial intelligence based technologies.”

Also, on July 18, the U.S. Federal Blockchain Forum, a program of GSA’s Emerging Citizen Technology program, organized in partnership with the Secretary of State’s Office of Global Partnerships and GSA’s Office of Information Technology Category, will be hosting a ground-breaking event. The event will:

Develop, share and discuss practical use cases for blockchain technology among federal government missions.
Identify resource, policy and compliance needs for the effective and efficient evaluation and implementation of blockchain technology in the federal government.
Develop a U.S. Federal Blockchain Atlas and road map for the next six months on how agencies can collaborate to achieve our goals and support the creation of shared services for blockchain technology.

What is Blockchain?

In a nutshell, blockchain is a technology and process for managing data and digital assets. It can be characterized as a public decentralized and distributed ledger technology that records historical transactions of any asset or currency. It functions as a peer-to-peer community network via a consensus-driven process. It is the technology behind cryptocurrencies.

Blockchain acts both as the information and the conduit. It also creates an audit trail that makes it appealing for reconciliation purposes of historical records, transactions and regulations that will impact a whole host of future government functions and services.

Most importantly, blockchain can offer government transparency and better efficiency.

A new white paper, “Realizing the Potential of Blockchain,” published by the World Economic Forum provides a good overview of the implications of blockchain for both the public and private sectors. The paper states that “blockchain appears likely to transform a number of important industries that supply or rely upon third-party assurance. It could prove to be a broader force for transparency and integrity in society, including in the fight against bribery and corruption. It could also lead to extensive changes in supply chains and governmental functions.”

The paper further says blockchain’s ability to generate unprecedented opportunities to create and trade value in society will lead to a generational shift from an internet of information to a new-generation internet of value.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

EDWARD CLINE: THE FRAUD OF FAITH

By on July 8th, 2017

“The main question here should be: Given Islam’s 14 00 year, rapacious, murderous rampage among Muslims themselves (the Sunnis vs. the Shi’ites and various Islamic sub-groups) and against the West, why would anyone want to save it as a “great” faith? Given Islam’s sociopathic and nihilist nature, how can it be called “great”?

Recently, a leading, pro-Brexit, and articulate critic of the European Union confessed that he has “faith”: Faith in what? In the existence of an all-knowing, all-powerful Deity. To judge by the encounters I’ve had with Christians (I do not have many discussions with Jews or Muslims on the subject of God), faith for people is a form of unquestionable certitude – almost synonymous with certainty – as an emotional means of knowing the truth about God etc. thanks to their unexamined feelings. Too likely their faith in the existence or condition of something not in the real world undercuts their profession of being reality-oriented. “I know that capitalism works and sets men free and that Britain can only become stronger if it leaves the EU.” How does he know that? Is his epistemology and metaphysics poisoned by faith? The mental compartmentalization of his faith and the real, of the provable or demonstratable of the real versus the unprovable, makes his fealty to reality untenable.

The position of most people is: “What else is there but faith in the Almighty, in miracles, in God’s goodness, and the sublime imperative handed down by God to treat all men as brothers? God created the universe, and everything. Sure, reason has its place in man’s existence but it must keep to its place – we’re not saying that doing the Hokey Pokey will start a car’s engine, in lieu of simply turning the ignition key – however , that is the limit of reason, logic, and of what we call cause and effect. Reason and reality are not substitutes for faith,” they aver with fervor. “The evidence of the senses and reason should not be the paramount measures of authentic knowledge.” So, they say; if the emotion is real and strong enough, so must be the object of that emotion.

An unexamined, spontaneous emotional appraisal is a dangerous thing. If one feels that something is true or right, then it must be true or right. What often stuns me is to meet someone who is otherwise completely rational and reality-oriented and then to hear him admit, in passing or unintentionally, that he believes in a Deity, or in a lucky rabbit’s foot. Faith in the reality of the non-existent and unprovable, to say nothing of the acceptance as “divine” handwork of the contradictory a (such as the destructive handiwork of earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions), becomes a substitute for knowledge.

Emotions are not causeless, rootless, or inexplicable. Love is not blind. Nor is hate. Even indifference to an artwork, a person, or thing, as a pre-conceptual appraisal, has an emotional base. An emotion is partly a physiological response to one’s values, or to non-values, to likes or dislikes, to attractions or fear. It is closely linked to the excitation of the nervous system, in various states and strengths, depending on the appraisal of the value seen and responded to; but it is a value one is responding to. It just does not well up within one, causelessly; the cause must be discovered and examined because it always has one. Rational introspection is a key to “knowing” whether or not one’s appraisal of a person or thing is correct or anchored in reality.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

PRESIDENT TRUMP’S AGENDA TODAY BY LIZ SHIELD

By on July 7th, 2017

Good Friday Morning.

Here is what’s on President Trump’s agenda today:

In the morning, President Donald J. Trump will attend the G-20 Summit Leaders’ Retreat.
In the afternoon, the President will participate in an expanded meeting with President Peña Nieto of Mexico. The President will then join the G-20 Summit Leaders Working Lunch.
Later in the afternoon, the President will attend the G-20 Summit Leaders’ Working Session II.
The President will then participate in an expanded meeting with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. IT’S HAPPENING!
In the evening, the President will attend the G-20 Summit Reception.
The President will then attend the G-20 Summit Concert.
Later in the evening, the President will attend the G-20 Summit Social Dinner.

Trump to meet RUSSIAN Putin today

Or perhaps they will “reunite,” if you get your news from CNN. The meeting will take place during the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany.

The New York Times says the meeting will be a win-win for Putin.

Whatever the outcome of the encounter on Friday — which will be on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit meeting of world leaders in Hamburg, Germany, but is expected to overshadow it — the Kremlin is betting that Mr. Putin can stage-manage the event so that he comes out looking like the stronger party.

If nothing much emerges from the meeting, analysts said, the Kremlin can repeat the standard Russian line that Mr. Trump is weak, hamstrung by domestic politics.

But if Mr. Trump agrees to work with Mr. Putin despite a list of Russian transgressions beginning with the annexation of Crimea and ending with its interference in the 2016 presidential election, he will also look weak while Mr. Putin can claim that he reconstructed the relationship.

“It is a win-win situation for Putin,” said Andrei V. Kolesnikov, a political analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center.

Whatever Russia hopes to get from the meeting, the fake news stories about RUSSIAN hacking will loom over the discussions.

The Kremlin is aware that Trump critics will be watching for further signs that the American leader is soft on Russia. “Trump is being accused of cooperating with Russia, so if he makes any concessions to Moscow, these accusations will gain strength,” said Aleksei Makarkin, deputy head of the Center for Political Technologies, a Moscow think tank.

The Kremlin has watched, chagrined, as the Trump administration has rolled back various positions stated during the campaign — his questioning of the viability of NATO, for example, or his expressions of sympathy for the Russian position on Crimea.

“The Kremlin is astonished that the president cannot behave like a real president, like ours, so what can they do in this situation?” Mr. Kolesnikov asked.

Commentary in the official Russian news media suggested that Moscow was baffled by the lack of a confirmed agenda, while various senior officials and the Kremlin press service have listed possible talking points that cover virtually every major international issue.

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