Paul Brandus

Opinion columnist

All the years I worked in Moscow, one of my favorite Russian phrases was “den' za dnem” — day by day. Struggling to survive in a country whose government had collapsed, where economic hardship and corruption were endemic, where there was little hope for the future, Russians often broke their existence down into just trying to make it through the next 24 hours. And the 24 after that.

Day by day. This is how we increasingly live as well, thanks to a 71-year-old president that 62 million Americans voted for but 73 million did not. Every day brings something new, something disturbing.

We’ve always known President Trump to be a habitual liar. But thanks to last week's email bombshell, we can now definitively brand Donald Trump Jr. as one, too. The revelation means many things, among them, that this sordid First Family and their enablers can no longer legitimately use the phrases "fake news" and “witch hunt” in relation to possible campaign collusion with the Kremlin.

Day by day. Does anyone doubt it’ll be this way for the next three-and-a-half exhausting years?

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Not least among the exhausting aspects of the Trump presidency is his isolation on the world stage and the damage he's doing to our national interests. He is giving our longtime allies increasing reason to think of him as an easy mark. They include some of our most fearsome adversaries, and they're using him to advance their own agendas at America’s expense.

Trump came home from the Group of 20 meeting in Hamburg with little more than the lint in his pockets. He reportedly accepted Vladimir Putin’s denial of election hacking — essentially saying “OK” before shifting the conversation to other areas where he’s also being played, like Syria.

The administration says it’s important to move on from the hacking allegations, and focus on areas of mutual interest. The president tweeted one such idea: an “impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded.” What a swell idea! What’s next? Sharing missile technology with North Korea?

After rounds of denunciations on Sunday shows and social media, Trump tried to say it was a bad idea that can't happen. But Russian President Vladimir Putin and other officials talked like it was real.

Putin and other American enemies know, as do Trump’s own staffers, that the easiest way to play him and get their way is by lavishing him with praise, by puffing up his vast ego and sense of infallibility.

In the past Putin has called Trump “yarkii," which in Russian means “strong personality,” and his state-owned TV networks gushed endlessly about him during the 2016 campaign. The Putin regime has been accused of assisting in the shooting down of a civilian airliner over Ukraine, the invasion of Ukraine itself, the ruthless suppression of civil liberties and the murder of journalists. In Hamburg, Trump said it was “an honor” to meet him.

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Trump also considered it a great honor to visit Saudi Arabia in May, where he bowed — or curtsied, see for yourself — before King Salman to get a shiny gold medal. The Saudis buttered him up further by raving about Melania Trump’s fashion sense — not that her attire would be allowed for Saudi women.

It’s no coincidence that after all this stroking, Trump looked the other way as the Saudis doubled down on their war in Yemen. He also gave Riyadh what it wanted to hear when he condemned Qatar — which provides a crucial base for our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — of funding terrorism at a “high level.” Saudi Arabia — home to 15 of the 19 September 11 hijackers — is also exempt from Trump’s Muslim travel ban.

Also playing the president like a fiddle: Chinese President Xi Jinping. After spending all of 2016 bashing China on trade, Trump apparently looked at a map and learned that China is right next to North Korea and was in a position to help rein in kooky strongman Kim Jong-un. Trump flip-flopped on a major campaign pledge — that he would crack down on China, a currency manipulator that was ripping us off.

In return for this giant concession, Trump got two things back: jack and squat. Yet he keeps buttering up Xi. In Paris on Thursday, Trump called him "a great leader," "a very talented man," " a very good man, "a terrific guy" and "a very special person." That was hours after the death of Liu-Xiaobo, the imprisoned human rights hero and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate .

As for that help on North Korea, we're now back to the Clinton-Bush-Obama playbook that Trump has so frequently maligned: diplomacy and sanctions.

What a dealmaker this president has turned out to be.

Another 1,280 or so days of winning awaits. I can’t wait. Day by day…by day.

Paul Brandus, founder and White House bureau chief of West Wing Reports, was a reporter based in Moscow from 1991 to 1996. He is the author of Under This Roof: The White House and the Presidency and a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors. Follow him on Twitter @WestWingReport.

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