“A prudent president, facing multiple battles on legislative and other priorities that are crucial to his first-year success, would find ways to avoid needless controversy. Not President Trump. He’s doing exactly the opposite, and the credibility gap continues to grow,” the Washington Post reports.

“The latest illustration of the president’s incapacity to admit error came Friday at a joint news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel… Trump was following a playbook that has become standard for his White House, which is to duck, deflect and in all other ways do everything but acknowledge that there is no credible evidence for Trump’s original claim, tweeted out two weeks ago. Having made the allegation, the president has asked others to prove it. When the evidence points in the opposite direction, the White House prefers to look for questionable ways to support what Trump claimed.”

“The health care measure appears on track for a House vote this week, and the president, who planned a weekend of relaxation at Mar-a-Lago, his Palm Beach, Fla., club, is likely to receive a large measure of the credit. But it has also become clear that Mr. Trump, an agitator incapable of responding proportionately to any slight, appears hellbent on squandering his honeymoon,” the New York Times reports.

“Instead, he has sowed chaos in his own West Wing, and talked or tweeted his way into trouble, over and over again.”

“That was never more apparent than over the last week, when fresh questions about his refusal to release his tax returns and the blocking of his executive order sapped the spotlight from his efforts to build support for the health measure and even the unveiling of his first budget. Even more self-lacerating: his insistence that President Barack Obama had authorized surveillance on his 2016 campaign, a claim that continued unabated despite rebukes from Republicans, denials by the congressional intelligence committees and complaints from the British government, which demanded an apology after Mr. Trump’s spokesman suggested that one of its intelligence agencies had aided in the spying.”

For members: A Terrible Week for Donald Trump

A Reuters review has found that at least 63 individuals with Russian passports or addresses have bought at least $98.4 million worth of property in seven Trump-branded luxury towers in southern Florida.

“The buyers include politically connected businessmen, such as a former executive in a Moscow-based state-run construction firm that works on military and intelligence facilities, the founder of a St. Petersburg investment bank and the co-founder of a conglomerate with interests in banking, property and electronics.”