World News: OnPolitics Today: This is the moment

with Jessica Estepa

OnPolitics Today: This is the moment

Happy Wednesday, OnPolitics friends! Hope you had a good Fourth of July. It's been a quiet-ish day, what with Congress being on vacay and the president being on a plane, but there's still much to look forward to and a bunch to rehash from the long holiday weekend. So let's do this.

This combination of pictures created on December 30,

The moment we've been waiting for

It's finally (probably) happening, guys: President Trump and Vladimir Putin are (likely) meeting face-to-face this week . The White House says this is no big deal (really, here's the quote from national security adviser H.R. McMaster: "Our relationship with Russia is not different from any other country in terms of us communicating to them, really, what our concerns are, where we see problems in the relationship, but also opportunities"). But we beg to differ. There's a lot to talk about that doesn't even include alleged meddling by Russia into the 2016 election. We've got to look at North Korea's missile tests, the civil war in Syria, that whole Ukraine thing. Of course, a meeting may not happen between Trump and Putin, as a Kremlin spokesman pointed out that the only confirmed contact between them is during a group meeting. But we're pulling for that pull-aside.

CNN's hashtags

The big stir over the holiday weekend: President Trump seemed to escalate his fight with the media by tweeting a mock-up video featuring him body slamming a character meant to be CNN. His chosen hashtags: #FraudNewsNetwork and #FNN.

CNN replied in kind by pointing out that Trump's own spokesperson said just last week, "The President in no way form or fashion has ever promoted or encouraged violence. If anything, quite the contrary."

The person who created the video pledged not to engage in offensive online behavior again, and CNN said it wouldn't publish his name - but the network reserved "the right to publish his identity should any of that change." And with that, another hashtag was born: #CNNblackmail.

Chris Christie's beach time

So, Chris Christie, governor of New Jersey, went to the beach this weekend. That's what you do over the 4th of July, right? Except he went to the beach when no one else in New Jersey could go to the beach, because he effectively closed down public beaches with a government shutdown. His reasoning: He's the governor, so he gets to do that. And he doesn't care about optics anyway. Even if that means that means a sand castle is modeled in his likeness.

Elsewhere in politics

•	United against 'Trumpcare', Democrats divided on next steps
•	Hillary Clinton responds to RNC asking where her health care plan is: 'Right here'
•	FBI director nominee Christopher Wray gets confirmation hearing date
•	Men make 37% more than women at Trump White House, economist says