WHY IT TOOK A DAY: According to President Trump’s version of events, he didn’t correct the record in the 24 hours after his Helsinki summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin because he didn’t realize what he said, until he checked the video and transcript of his extemporaneous remarks during the question and answer session with reporters.

BACK ON HIS GAME: Trump came out swinging this morning defending his much-maligned summit performance in a series of predawn tweets. “So many people at the higher ends of intelligence loved my press conference performance in Helsinki. Putin and I discussed many important subjects at our earlier meeting. We got along well which truly bothered many haters who wanted to see a boxing match. Big results will come!” he tweeted

“While the NATO meeting in Brussels was an acknowledged triumph …the meeting with Russia may prove to be, in the long run, an even greater success,” he added. “Many positive things will come out of that meeting. Russia has agreed to help with North Korea, where relationships with us are very good and the process is moving along. There is no rush, the sanctions remain! Big benefits and exciting future for North Korea at end of process!”

AGREEMENTS? WHAT AGREEMENTS? The Russian Defense Ministry says its ready to move ahead on those agreements reached by Trump and Putin behind closed doors in Helsinki. The only problem is, no one in Washington has said anything about any firm agreements.

In his remarks during the post-summit press conference, Putin hinted an agreement on Syria “could be the first showcase example of the successful joint work.” And then in an interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News he said, Russia “stands ready” to extend the New START nuclear weapons treaty which expires in 2012. But, Putin said, “We have to agree on the specifics at first because we have some questions to our American partners.”

“The Russian Defense Ministry is ready for practical implementation of the agreements in the sphere of international security reached by Russian and US Presidents, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, at their Monday’s summit in Helsinki,” said ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov, according to Tass. “The Russian Defense Ministry is ready to enliven contact with the US colleagues, between our General Staffs and via other communication channels, to discuss extension of the START Treaty, cooperation in Syria, and other topical issues of military security.”

DEMS WANT TO KNOW WHAT WAS SAID: A group of leading Senate Democrats have written Trump urging him to answer a list of questions about his private one-on-one meeting with Putin. “Yesterday was a stunning day for American democracy,” begins the letter by Sen. Jack Reed, the ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, along with Sens. Bob Menendez, Dick Durbin, Mark Warner, Sherrod Brown, and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. “We as a nation must now wonder exactly what you discussed and may have promised to President Putin.” Trump spent over two hours with Putin accompanied only by translators before holding a working lunch and the now infamous joint news press conference.

“Did you make any commitments regarding the future of the U.S. military presence in Syria?” the Democrats wrote in a list of 13 questions. “Did you discuss NATO military exercises scheduled for this fall? Did you agree to roll back or change the nature of those exercises?” They told Trump that the answers are “critical” to national security. “Answering them in full, without hesitation, will demonstrate that you do still hold America’s interests first,” they wrote.

SEND US POMPEO, MATTIS: In their letter to Trump, the Democrats also urged Trump to immediately send Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to the Hill to testify on the summit. Menendez and other Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee are already set to grill Secretary of State Mike Pompeo when he appears before the committee next week. Pompeo will testify at a public hearing on July 25. The committee originally requested to talk with Pompeo about negotiations with North Korea, but added Russia as a discussion topic following the summit fallout on Monday.

HOUSE SPURS SENATE ON SPENDING BILL: The end of the fiscal year is just two and a half months away and some House members are already getting worried the Senate will blow the defense budget deadline. “We have repeatedly seen partisan politics, particularly in the Senate, prevent the Congress from delivering a funding bill to the president’s desk on time,” Rep. Liz Cheney, a House Armed Services member said on the chamber floor. Cheney and fellow committee members Reps. Mike Gallagher and Rob Wittman teed up votes Tuesday on three resolutions pointing out the damage another stopgap budget measure at the end of September will do to the Pentagon, Marine Corps, and Navy. “In the face of all these threats … we in this body must resolve to add to the risk our troops are facing and we must fulfill our constitutional duty and provide sufficient, on-time, reliable funding,” Cheney said.

SMITH FIRES BACK: Cheney said members plan to send another message with two more similar resolutions about the Air Force and Army next week. But Rep. Adam Smith, the ranking member on the House Armed Services Committee, said it is not so simple. “We have had uncertain funding for going on almost 8 years now for the Department of Defense. It has been a series of continuing resolutions, two government shutdowns, multiple threatened government shutdowns and an unbelievable amount of uncertainty,” Smith said.

“Why are we in this situation? Why do we have budget uncertainty year after year?” He pointed to Republican fiscal policy as a culprit. “The reason for all of that is decisions you make on the front end. You can’t cut taxes by $2 trillion, after by the way over the course of the 15 years prior we already cut them by multiple trillions of dollars, and then stand up and say, ‘DOD doesn’t have enough money!’” Smith said.

SENATE BILL IN LIMBO: House members, who passed their own defense spending bill late last month, may have cause to be a little concerned. The Senate’s first attempt to hammer out a final version of a 2019 “minibus” of three spending bills with the House stalled out last week. The minibus was supposed to signal a return to normal budget order after years of dysfunction. Meanwhile, the Senate’s 2019 defense spending bill remains in limbo after being passed out of committee late last month. Sen. Richard Shelby, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said he spoke with leadership on Tuesday but could not say when the bill might get a vote on the chamber floor. “I can’t tell you it will be next week, I don’t want to use the word soon. As soon as we can,” Shelby said.

BOEING SEALS AF1 CONTRACT: Boeing has signed a $3.9 billion deal with the Trump administration to develop, modify, and test two new Air Force One presidential jets, Bloomberg reported. “The planes, Boeing 747-8s, would be delivered by December 2024. That would be Trump’s last full year in office if he wins a second term,” the news service reported, citing anonymous sources. As Bloomberg notes, Trump criticized the replacement program costs as out of control and threatened to cancel the order. He eventually struck a deal with the company to move forward in February.

That means whether they like it or not the next U.S. president is going to be traveling in jets with a major style makeover. “Air Force One is going to be incredible. It’s gonna be the top of the line, the top in the world. And it’s gonna be red, white and blue, which I think is appropriate,” Trump told CBS News during his trip abroad. Trump’s confirmation follows Axios reporting that he wanted the presidential plane to have a “more American” aesthetic, as opposed to the white and robin’s-egg blue color scheme chosen for President John F. Kennedy and first lady Jackie Kennedy in the early 1960s.

HIGH ON SPACE FORCE: When Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein spoke to reporters at the Pentagon yesterday, he didn’t seem too bothered by the DoD’s long-standing concern that creating a separate Space Force would add unnecessary overhead to the already bloated Pentagon bureaucracy. In fact, he seemed anxious to embrace the president’s surprise directive, which he says dovetails with something he is “passionate” about.

“Now I’ve got the president of United States that’s talking openly about space as a warfighting domain. I’ve got a vice president of the United States who stood up the National Space Council and is moving out. I got Congress that’s now engaged in talking a lot about space. I’ve got the secretary of defense. I’ve got the deputy secretary,” Goldfein said. “So I see this as a huge opportunity right now that we’ve been given to have a national-level dialog about where we’re going in space. And so I, I love the fact that the president is leading that discussion.”

Goldfein indicated the debate about whether Space should be the domain of a completely separate service is effectively over. “I think that the secretary of defense has actually said this very wisely said,” Godfein said. “He said, ‘Hey look, you know, we heard the president loud and clear, and there is no question in our mind the direction he has given.’ And so we have begun that planning effort. We’re moving out smartly.”

DEBATING A COATS RESIGNATION: Lawmakers, national security experts, and political pundits are divided over whether Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats should resign after Trump’s Russia summit. Former DNI James Clapper, Coats’ immediate predecessor, said during an interview with CNN on Tuesday he would have stepped down in “a heartbeat, particularly after being publicly thrown under the bus, internationally thrown under the bus by the president.”

Meanwhile, others are worried about who might take Coats’ place. “I understand you want Dan Coats to be the Elliot Richardson who stands up for moral authority and resigns in protest over the actions of the president, but who replaces him?” Evan Siegfried, a Republican strategist, told MSNBC, referring to the U.S. attorney general who stepped down rather than carry out former President Richard Nixon’s order to fire special prosecutor Archibald Cox during the 1973 Saturday Night Massacre. “And it could be a Trump loyalist, who has the intellectual capacity of a potato,” Siegfried said.

THE RUNDOWN

Washington Examiner: The Air Force wants a cheaper plane to fight terrorists. Will it survive on the battlefield?

Washington Examiner: Majority of Americans feel Russia is ‘unfriendly,’ ‘enemy’ to US: Poll

Reuters: U.S. hopes for return of 50 Korean War dead from North Korea within two weeks

Roll Call: Senators eye new Russia sanctions as Trump defends Putin summit

Washington Post: ISIS makes a rapid comeback in Iraq

Military Times: MAVNI troops falsified records, were security risk, DoD says

Defense Tech: Army to buy Raytheon’s coyote expendable UAS for drone-killing mission

Breaking Defense: Meet the new U.S. export policy, and the tariffs complicating things

New York Times: In Russia, summit is seen as a triumph for Putin

Defense News: Here’s who could soon lead the Army’s Futures Command

Task and Purpose: Here’s why the ejection seat failed during that fiery B-1B Lancer emergency landing

Defense One: NATO already vastly outspends Russia. Its problems are not about money.

Flight Global: FARNBOROUGH: Japan F-35 production headed to max capacity next year

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