In July, the New York Times broke news that Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner had met in June 2016 with Russian individuals who had connections to the Kremlin. Trump Jr. released a statement in response, which asserted that the meeting involved an innocuous and inconsequential conversation about adoption:
It was a short introductory meeting. I asked Jared and Paul to stop by. We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago and was since ended by the Russian government, but it was not a campaign issue at the time and there was no follow-up.
Subsequent cascades of reporting, of course, revealed that the Russians who met with Trump Jr. were in fact actively involved in the Kremlin’s effort to overturn human rights-related economic sanctions—and that Trump Jr. met with them after being promised incriminating information about Hillary Clinton. Don Jr.’s initial statement, then, turns out to have been quite misleading—and, on Monday, the Washington Post reported that Donald Trump Sr., aka the president, was directly involved in writing it.
This directly contradicted an earlier claim by Trump Sr. lawyer Jay Sekulow that POTUS was “not involved in the drafting of the statement,” so reporters asked White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders about the contradiction at Tuesday’s press briefing. Her answer involved a lot of argle-bargle about Hillary Clinton, fake news, etc., but started like so: “The president weighed in as any father would based on the limited information that he had.”
Analysis:
1. Jay Sekulow is full of crap. That’s the last time I trust one of Donald Trump’s attorneys!
2. “The limited information that he had,” LOL. If only there had been some way for the president of America to find out what happened in a meeting involving his son, campaign chairman, and son-in-law/top adviser before issuing a statement about it to the New York Times.
3. “As any father would do!” Let’s go to Esquire’s Steve Kandell for this one:
Like the ending of Field of Dreams, but for collaborating with a hostile foreign intelligence service to destroy democracy!
