On Tuesday, the center-right pundit published a piece that featured this remarkable paragraph, which I like to imagine Brooks celebrating with an Italian chef kiss with his greasy mortadella fingers:

There are lots of dumb things about this totally real anecdote. First off, poor people eat Italian sandwiches, which are quite common. Second, there’s the fact that he and his very real friend end up eating “Mexican,” the low-class fare that plebians would certainly be comfortable with. Hmm.

But the completely not fake sandwich story is actually just a vehicle for Brooks to make a very bad point: that the division between the upper-middle class and everyone else is caused not by structural barriers but “informal social barriers.” Brooks actually dedicates the first half of his piece to detailing a whole host of very real structural barriers: that upper-middle-class parents spend two to three times more on their children than their lower-class counterparts; that they can spend buckets of money to get their kids admitted to college; that housing policy segregates poor people from the neighborhoods and schools of rich, white people like David Brooks.

But then there is an incredible bait-and-switch. As Brooks writes, “I’ve come to think the structural barriers [analyst Richard Reeves] emphasizes are less important than the informal social barriers that segregate the lower 80 percent.”

The only way Brooks could come to that conclusion after laying out (himself!) the immense structural barriers that poor people face is through willful ignorance. If culture is the main problem, then people like Brooks don’t need to think about, say, giving up any of their wealth to create a more equal society. It’s much easier to pat yourself on the back after taking your definitely real lower-income friend out to Mexican food than it is to support policies that would help that person live in the same neighborhood as you.

The thing is, if you give poor people more money, then they can afford the freaking bufala mozzarella at David Brooks’s fancy sandwich shop.

The fabled smoking gun showing that President Trump’s campaign team colluded with the Russian government might indeed exist. As The New York Times reported last night:

Before arranging a meeting with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer he believed would offer him compromising information about Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump Jr. was informed in an email that the material was part of a Russian government effort to aid his father’s candidacy, according to three people with knowledge of the email....

Mr. Goldstone’s message, as described to The New York Times by the three people, indicates that the Russian government was the source of the potentially damaging information.

Trump Jr.’s lawyer doesn’t deny these reports. Instead, he tries to downplay their significance, saying, “This is much ado about nothing.” Other parties involved in the meeting, notably the colorful music promoter Rob Goldstone and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, either refused to talk to the Times or tried to minimize the importance of the email and meeting.

If the Times report is accurate, then the most startling fact is the sheer folly of the interested parties. They not only engaged in potentially criminal behavior, but also left an email trail that could be used to track their activities. The sobering fact is that the biggest political scandal since Watergate is busting wide open thanks to the overwhelming power of pure stupidity.

On Saturday and Sunday, The New York Times published two stories that are the most damning evidence we have so far of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. First, the Times reported the existence of a meeting in June 2016 between Donald Trump Jr., aka Trump’s least favorite son, and Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer with connections to the Kremlin. Paul Manafort, who was campaign chairman at the time, and Jared Kushner were also in attendance.

Back in March, Trump Jr. had explicitly said that he didn’t have any meetings with Russians while “representing the campaign,” stating, “Did I meet with people that were Russian? I’m sure, I’m sure I did. But none that were set up. None that I can think of at the moment. And certainly none that I was representing the campaign in any way, shape, or form.” But the meeting described by the Times on Saturday certainly looks like it was set up.

In response, Don Jr. claimed that the meeting was primarily about Russia’s adoption policies. But then on Sunday, the Times followed up with another scoop: according to five unnamed sources, Veselnitskaya had promised DJT Jr. some sweet, sweet kompromat on Hillary Clinton, giving the incident a very collusion-y twist. (There is no proof that Veselnitskaya actually provided any damaging information.)

This forced Don Jon Jr. to change his story yet again. He conceded that he wanted the dirt on Clinton but that no dirt was to be had. As he told the Times, “After pleasantries were exchanged the woman stated that she had information that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Mrs. Clinton. Her statements were vague, ambiguous and made no sense. No details or supporting information was provided or even offered. It quickly became clear that she had no meaningful information.” The conversation then allegedly turned to Vladimir Putin banning the adoption of Russian children by American foster parents.

Then, on Monday morning, Trump Jr. tweeted the following:

So to recap: At first, Jonny Jr. claimed that he never set up a meeting with Russians to talk about sabatoging Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Then, when the Times found out he did set up the meeting, he claimed it was just about adoption. Then, when the Times found out that it was in fact about the campaign, he claimed that it was about adoption AND the campaign (but mostly about adoption). Then after a night of backlash, Don Don dismissively tweeted, “What, as if you wouldn’t have met with her to talk about the campaign??”

An excerpt from Joshua Green’s forthcoming book Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency has a fascinating tidbit about how Coulter in 2016 was a covert advisor to the Trump campaign, even as she was also a public cheerleader for the policies she helped craft:

When Trump came under fire because his campaign hadn’t produced a single policy paper, Bannon arranged for Nunberg and Ann Coulter, the conservative pundit, to quickly write a white paper on Trump’s immigration policies. When the campaign released it, Coulter, without disclosing her role, tweeted that it was “the greatest political document since the Magna Carta.”

But if candidate Trump was the perfect sock puppet who was willing to repeat Coulter’s lines word for word, President Trump has turned out to be a disappointment. A recurring theme of Coulter’s columns and tweets over the last few months is anger that Trump isn’t living up to his immigration promises (which Coulter wrote). “He’s the commander in chief!” ran a Coulter cry from the heart in April. “He said he’d build a wall. If he can’t do that, Trump is finished, the Republican Party is finished, and the country is finished.”

Before becoming president, Trump famously decided to not participate in daily intelligence briefings, saying, “I’m, like, a smart person. I don’t have to be told the same thing in the same words every single day for the next eight years.” Instead Trump has gotten the information he needs every morning from cable television, particularly Fox & Friends.

On Monday morning, Trump retweeted Fox & Friends four times and Sean Hannity once; he sent two tweets defending his daughter Ivanka Trump for keeping his seat warm during the G-20 conference in Hamburg; one tweet about the need to repeal and replace Obamacare; and another accusing James Comey of illegally leaking classified information. The last one is the best place to start.

Trump technically tweeted about the former FBI director three times, since two of the Fox & Friends retweets were about a Hill report that alleged that more than half of Comey’s memos, some of which he shared with a friend, contained classified information.

Trump, as usual, takes a tantalizing possibility and amplifies it to its most damning possible conclusion: that Comey knowingly leaked classified information to the press. There are two problems here. The first is that the Hill report merely raises the possibility that Comey may have leaked classified information to the press. And the second is that this is the president, who could surely know more about this issue if he wished to.

Trump’s tweet about his daughter also has a lot going on:

This is the Trump presidency in a nutshell: He does something inappropriate; people correctly label what he did as being inappropriate; Trump then reacts to that reaction, usually by bringing the Clintons into it. In this case, Trump’s response is doubly weird, because he basically concedes that his critics are correct: He’s grooming Ivanka for high office and had her take his seat at the G-20 for that reason.

This has been a banner week for electric cars. Tesla’s first mass-market electric car, the Model 3, just came off the assembly line. Volvo announced that it will abandon conventional car engines by 2019, and make only electric and hybrid cars. And France, in an attempt to meet its goals under the Paris climate agreement, said Thursday they will phase out the sale of gasoline and diesel vehicles by 2040.

The barrage of news has multiple outlets crying “revolution”—and for good reason. “The Electric Car Revolution Is Accelerating,” Bloomberg Businessweek announced Friday, citing a new forecast that says the widespread adoption of “emission-free” electric vehicles will happen more quickly than previously thought. “The seismic shift will see cars with a plug account for a third of the global auto fleet by 2040 and displace about 8 million barrels a day of oil production—more than the 7 million barrels Saudi Arabia exports today,” the report reads.

But much needs to be accomplished before electric vehicles are truly “emission-free.” The increase in demand for electric-car batteries will increase demand for raw materials like nickel and lithium, which creates a “less than ideal” CO2 footprint in the short term, one analyst told the Financial Times. And although electric vehicles don’t run on gasoline, they do run on electricity—and in many places, much of that electricity is still generated from fossil fuel sources. A 2013 report titled “Shades of Green: Electric Cars’ Carbon Emissions Around the Globe,” showed just how much carbon is emitted by electric vehicles in each country, depending on the power source for the batteries.

In the U.S., battery sources are still fossil-fuel heavy. Their carbon footprint is still better overall than gas-powered cars’, but it shows that until the U.S. switches to a renewable-heavy power grid, electric cars won’t be as green as we think they are.

Trump and Putin finally met on Friday. Their first handshake, given Trump’s track record, was surprisingly yank-free.

Despite the consensus that Russian interference in the 2016 election helped elect him, Trump has been steadfast in his pledge to push for better relations with Putin and Russia. Predicting what Trump is going to do is a fool’s errand, but there’s reason to believe he will push for greater cooperation in the fight against ISIS—and perhaps even make a (rather convoluted) deal to firm up a unified strategy in Syria.

Trump may genuinely believe that teaming up with Putin is the best bet to stabilize Syria. He may believe, as Steve Bannon seems to, that teaming up with Russia is necessary to win the “fight for our beliefs against this new barbarity that’s starting, that will completely eradicate everything that we’ve been bequeathed over the last 2,000, 2,500 years.” But he has absolutely no leverage in this meeting.

Putin is looking at what is almost surely a win-win. If the talks fizzle—always a safe bet—he can make the argument that the U.S. president wants better relations with Russia but that domestic politics and the deep state just won’t let it happen. And the fact that the G-20 meeting has shown the growing gulf between the United States and its allies in Western Europe means that the conference has already been a success for Russia.

But if they do make a deal—in spite of Crimea and Syria and the 2016 election—it will be on Putin’s terms. He can rightfully argue that the United States has come around to his approach to foreign policy and will undoubtedly see it as a green light for other territorial excursions, whether they be in the Baltics or elsewhere.

If Trump were to bring up Russian interference in the 2016 election, that would change the calculus. It would make the prospect of any deal more unlikely, but it would also take leverage away from Putin. But Trump, the master-negotiator, has shown no sign that he will do that.