[Andim]

"before the midterm elections, Reagan Trump would be pictured shaking hands with the smiling Russian"

"the president looked stung, like a small boy who had burned his fingers playing with a light socket"

"the man who said no to a historic opportunity"

"the president retreated in confusion. His image-makers had been overwhelmed by reality"

"it was a public-relations fiasco. Gorby Vlad smoked him out on the key question"

"Back in Washington, the president’s own propagandists set about converting defeat into triumph. When the summit collapsed, Secretary of State appeared on television, his face the pallor of a pallbearer’s, and announced the administration’s “deep disappointment.”

"While all the inside facts may never be known, the savvy players from left to right are confounded by the administration’s inept performance. How did Reagan Trump, the master craftsman of manufactured images, let himself get stuck in an embarrassing scenario where he became the heavy? Why did the president’s handlers in the White House and the State Department allow Gorbachev Putin to set him up?"

“I think it was a trap. It’s a classic example of why you should never go unprepared to summit meetings and try to wing it. It came about because the White House thought it would get a painless summit out of this, a photo opportunity that would give Republicans a minipop going into elections.”

“How did the White House get suckered into this?"

"The president’s most conservative, hard-line allies in Congress share suspicion that Iceland Helsinki was a setup from the start."

https://www.rollingstone.com/politic...summit-118796/

Rolling "fucking" Stone.
December 4, 1986