During a joint press conference alongside French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris, President Trump praised his son and explained away his controversial meeting with a Russian lawyer by basically saying that anyone in politics would have done it. “My son is a wonderful young man. He took a meeting with a Russian lawyer, not a government lawyer, but a Russian lawyer. It was a short meeting. It was a meeting that went very, very quickly, very fast … I think from a practical standpoint, most people would have taken that meeting. I think it’s a meeting that most people in politics probably would have taken.” (My son is also a wonderful young man. But when he stole a balloon from a local toy store, I made him bring it back and apologize.)

+ Vox has a refresher on everything we know about the Trump-Russia scandal so far.

+ “Putin didn’t convince us to turn the Internet’s promise of a networked future into a nonstop rage-fest in which we all sling mud (and worse) at each other from our paranoid, self-righteous silos of homogeneity.” There’s no doubt that Russia worked to influence our elections, but they never could have done it if we hadn’t laid the groundwork ourselves. Here’s my rip-roaring take: Putin Didn’t Do It.