“Wholly appropriate” was a phrase that H. R. McMaster, the national-security adviser, used more than half a dozen times in a press briefing on Tuesday morning, in describing what President Donald Trump revealed to Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in an Oval Office meeting last week. The Washington Post, followed by other media organizations, had described the conversation in a way that was wholly dismaying. The various accounts had Trump boasting about his intelligence (perhaps in both senses of the word) and showing off the most sensitive information in the same way that he showed reporters who visited his Trump Tower office the framed magazine covers on his wall, each one bearing a picture of Trump. Worse, the Post reported that the intelligence Trump bragged about came from a Middle Eastern ally that had not given permission to share it, and that might not want the Russians, in particular, to know the sources and methods by which it had learned 查看全文>>