WINNERS: 

Argentina: At least the spirit of revolution against an incompetent government is alive in this South American nation, evidenced by the players of its national football team rising up against their coach halfway through the World Cup

Latent, unconsummated homophobia: Finally, a generation of liberals have an excuse to let out this long-repressed emotion in lieu of coming up with any actual jokes or insights about the relationship between Trump and Putin

Europe: I mean, they’re getting screwed over on the Russia thing too, but at least they’re trying to do something about the excessive massing of power in the hands of a small number of colossal corporations

The NRA: The Trump administration just enacted a new policy allowing the gun organization to withhold the names of its large donors from the IRS, which, in an incredibly fortuitous coincidence, comes just as evidence emerges that a Russian operative attempted to infiltrate their ranks to sow discord, the sort of stroke of luck money just can’t buy

Russia: Less than a week after hosting the World Cup, one of the country’s top soccer clubs rescinded a player’s contract because the fans didn’t want a black player, a piece of news which, frankly, probably only makes Donald Trump more willing to work for Russia’s and Putin’s benefit

Paul Ryan: Only has six more months of this

Donald Trump: Oh, okay. He says he misspoke on Monday. That’s definitely the truth, it totally exonerates him, and there’s no reason to look any further into the matter. I, a Republican lawmaker, can continue to back him with total, unthinking loyalty

Donald Trump’s statement that “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters”: Events continue to affirm the truth of this statement, a tremendous testament to Trump’s foresight and plain-spokenness

Donald Trump, again: The mastermind schemer has perfectly timed this Helsinki business to distract everyone from the fresh allegations that he attended parties with models as young as 14 and hit on 17-year-olds with lines like, “great, so you’re not too old and not too young. That’s just great”

Joe Walsh: Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made A Great Point

The version of Rudy Giuliani that only exists in Rudy Giuliani’s mind: Once again brilliantly covered for his president, dispelling the news that Trump and Michael Cohen had discussed paying hush money to former Playboy model Karen McDougal by claiming that they’d instead bought the rights to the story from the National Enquirer

Brief diversions: lol check out this hilarious bit of copy from whoever writes up what’s trending on Twitter

LOSERS:  

The version of Rudy Giuliani that’s known to the world: Might have just admitted that the Trump campaign paid a news outlet to not run a negative story, in violation of campaign finance laws? I honestly don’t know any longer, folks

Melania Trump: I mean, just look at her face up there. That is the face of a woman who’s either deeply apprehensive about what her husband’s up to, or harbors some tremendous antipathy towards soccer

Everyone responsible for placing some sort of check or restraint on Donald Trump’s actions: “President Trump plans to invite President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to Washington for another meeting in the fall, officials said Thursday, even as Mr. Trump’s top advisers groped for details of what the two leaders discussed in their last meeting in Helsinki, Finland.”

My confidence in Donald Trump’s ability to fairly and objectively assess the threats facing this country: I’ll tell you what, after this week’s report that Trump “was shown highly classified intelligence indicating that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had personally ordered complex cyberattacks to sway the 2016 American election” yet continues to display total confidence in Putin, I’m starting to think that maybe our President is not fully capable of grasping the gravity of the circumstances in which America now finds itself

Trying anymore: Trump’s director of national intelligence reacted to being kept in the dark about Trump’s meeting with Putin by saying, “It is what it is”, a clear sign that the human predilection toward making any sort of effort toward achieving or fulfilling goals is passé

The GOP: Have now distanced themselves so far from any sort of enforcement of accountability that the harshest voice among them is one of the New York Times’s conservative columnists demanding that a few members of Trump’s cabinet resign on the seemingly mistaken basis that they have any remaining sense of dignity

The White House staff: When your excuses for your boss are literally that he’s too stupid to do his job, maybe you should switch jobs

People who think I’m kidding about that: Oh, you thought I was kidding, were you? That link above relays the words of senior White House staffers claiming that Trump literally cannot understand that cyberattacks are a different matter than collusion

Montenegro:

“…Every Allied government gave me a decoration — even Montenegro, little Montenegro down on the Adriatic Sea!”

Little Montenegro! He lifted up the words and nodded at them — with his smile. The smile comprehended Montenegro’s troubled history and sympathized with the brave struggles of the Montenegrin people. It appreciated fully the chain of national circumstances which had elicited this tribute from Montenegro’s warm little heart.

– F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Montenegro is a tiny country with very strong people. They’re very strong people, they’re very aggressive people. They may get aggressive and, congratulations, you’re in World War Three.

– Donald Trump, when asked whether the USA should come to Montenegro’s aid under the NATO treaty

America’s perception abroad: But hey, on the plus side, if we look domestically, we can see that Andrew Cuomo is comfortably trouncing Cynthia Nixon in the polls and the Democratic establishment appears to not be accepting Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s primary victory! wait hang on

Ronald Reagan: Must be rolling in his grave right now, which, incidentally, is the image the Republican Congress will be referencing onto in lieu of offering any sort of material or legislative rebuke to Trump

Barack Obama: Several Republicans are offering the excuse that he did it first, so what Trump did is okay, yet another way that our ex-president failed to prevent the rise of Trump

Papa John: Surprised he hasn’t yet claimed that he was compelled by Russian agents to use the N-word

Maria Butina: No amount of love for the motherland can justify having sex with middle-aged Republicans to gain political access

Vladimir Putin: His diabolical, intricate scheme to dismantle America from the inside is going like the dickens, but it still hasn’t stopped him from only being 5’6″ tall

Whoa, wait, what?: Yeah, you didn’t know that, did you? His misinformation campaign is insidious

The #Resistance: Oh, wait, Monday’s actions may not technically be treason under the narrow framing outlined in the Constitution. Ah, okay. We got all worked up over nothing. Sorry, folks. Nothing to see here. Sorry, President Trump, sir

Image: www.kremlin.ru