Happy Sunday! Steph Curry carried the Golden State Warriors to a 2-1 series lead over Houston last night, and Jimmy Butler was out injured. That’s the big news. The Denver Nuggets almost blew a 20-point lead, too. Lols. Now, to international affairs…

Wait. I chatted yesterday with an actor who’d been in a show with David Caruso, once. Caruso, as we all know, was really good in the first season of “NYPD Blue,” which is now streaming on Hulu. But he left after failing to secure the raise he wanted, hoping to kickstart a movie career that didn’t pan out. Then he spent decades doing “CSI.” Everyone had told this actor to beware Caruso’s temper on set, but it turned out, he was just “quiet and sad.” Don’t be like David Caruso and blow a good thing, people. It’s a lesson for all of us. Here’s to his very best years, and the path not taken of modesty and gratitude and service.

Anyway.

Today’s front page story explores the age-old adage that Donald Trump is doing Vladimir Putin’s bidding. For years I’ve believed Trump is an agent of Russia. Lately I’ve realized he’s just so crap at everything he does that Russia’s efforts to promote his interests naturally pay off for our enemies. Sure. Trump was “recruited” by the KGB in the ‘80s. I believe that.

But what sort of asset would he make? Trump wouldn’t be able to keep his mouth shut for five seconds if he were a witting agent of a foreign power. Can you imagine? Still.

Break it down, Peter Baker, who incidentally, never finished his undergraduate degree at Oberlin and still served two years as Moscow Bureau Chief for the Times. I love career stories like that.

Say maybe Trump is a witting agent? There’s more.

Then Mr. Baker provides a few damning paragraphs which I’ll summarize slightly here because you get the gist. Comrade Donald. Agent Orange. Etcetera.

• Mr. Trump has been tearing down American institutions that have long aggravated Moscow, such as Voice of America and the National Endowment for Democracy.

• He has been disarming the nation in its netherworld battle against Russia by temporarily halting cyberoffensive operations and curbing programs to combat Russian disinformation, election interference, sanctions violations and war crimes.

• He spared Russia from the tariffs that he is imposing on imports from nearly every other nation, arguing that it was already under sanctions. Yet he still applied the tariff on Ukraine, the other party he is negotiating with.

• And in a reversal from his first term, Politico reported that Mr. Trump’s team is reportedly discussing whether to lift sanctions on Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Europe, a project he has repeatedly condemned.

Trump’s spokeswoman, Karoline Leavitt, told the New York Times that “the president only acts in the interest of the United States,” adding that there was no connection between Russia and the cuts to various organizations that have been orchestrated by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, or similar efforts to pare back government. She actually had to say this out loud, to deny it. It’s remarkable:

I’m afraid to report that I don’t have a lot of confidence in Karoline Leavitt.

Trump, meanwhile, attacked the reporter behind this article on social media yesterday. I’m going to re-share his whole post because it’s so pathetic. The last three sentences are also really, truly eye-opening.

That’s an interesting response, don’t you think? Because while Trump is lashing out at Baker’s reporting he also concedes that maybe Putin is “just tapping me along,” as he’s mulling sanctions. It’s as if he’s processing aloud that he’s been Putin’s patsy for years.

I wish he had gotten therapy instead of treating America as his couch.

Baker’s piece chronicles how Russia celebrated Trump shutting down the Voice of America. Margarita Simonyan, the head of the Russian state broadcaster RT, called it “an awesome decision by Trump.” She added, “We couldn’t shut them down, unfortunately, but America did so itself.”

Russia also resented the U.S. Agency for International Development, the National Endowment for Democracy, the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute. They all now “face the ax,” Baker reports.

And Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s new department restructuring plan likewise takes aim at offices that have aggravated Russia over the years, including the democracy and human rights bureau, which would be folded into an office for foreign assistance.

Let’s have another damning quote, shall we?

Baker even finds an analyst at the RAND corporation to say pretty much the same thing.

Some of the targets of the Trump administration’s cuts have been resisting. A federal judge has blocked the dismantling of Voice of America, and other groups are suing too. Mr. Rubio earlier this month shut down an office that tracked foreign disinformation from Russia and other adversaries.

But that’s all of it. Wait. That’s not all of it?!

Mr. Baker really goes on a victory lap, here.

You know the Times is pissed when they give this much room to dunking on Trump. Here’s the Times on the right, and Trump on the left.

Like, “don’t call our reporter ‘leedle’ on Truth Social.”

That’s what this is. And the piece goes on for even more hundreds of words. It’s an epic. I honestly can commend it to you if you really want to lap up and give thanks for the fact that a good newspaper exists, this morning. Mr. Baker may never have graduated from college but he got the pay rise he wanted and stuck with “NYPD Blue”, as far as I’m concerned. None of this “CSI: Miami” sh*t.

Just last month the intelligence community declared that Russia remains an “enduring potential threat to U.S. power, presence and global interests.” And yet the current approach favors Russia across the board.

As a reminder, more than half the country voted for this, because they didn’t like a competent Black woman who occasionally spoke in long sentences. No wonder the U.S. is going to miss out on billions of dollars in foreign tourism dollars.

The mess is so horrific that even the atheist, left-leaning Guardian’s columnist quotes the Old Testament this morning:

And there’s good news coming, apparently, although not in the sense that the Old Testament is often interpreted. But:

Consider that backboard broken, Don. You just got posterized. Meantime, have a great Sunday, friends. Praise the Lord!

Say, is there a story that might cheer me up a bit?

Oh, sure. Read 👇🏻 this article from CNN. The end of the world may be nigh, but Gwyneth Paltrow has finally made a smart decision:

On that note I made two delicious things to eat from the New York Times’ Cooking app, yesterday, which I can 100% recommend, especially when you just hit “get the ingredients on instacart” and a recent immigrant to America delivers them to your door in a matter of hours. You can tip them generously and enjoy being a contributor to this great, great, great country and stuttering economy of ours.

Make America crumble again! Tonight, I’m gonna make this:

Phworrrr. Thanks for letting me read the newspaper so that you don’t have to.

Matt Davis lives in Manhattan with his wife and kid.

Standard disclaimer: I read the top story in the New York Times every morning so that you don’t have to. If you were forwarded this, you can subscribe here. I’m also doing a five-minute video version of this, each weekday morning at around 9 a.m. (depending on how long it takes me to read the newspaper). If you’d like to follow me on LinkedIn (you can always watch the recording later). If you subscribe to my Youtube channel it’ll also send you a notification when I’m “going live.”