Good Grief, This Guy

Posted by Melissa McEwan at Wednesday, July 12, 2017
Last night, Donald Trump Jr. did an interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity, because of course he did. You don't need to waste your life watching the whole thing, or even extended clips, because this three seconds pretty much encapsulates the entire thing.


"Someone sent me an email. I can't help what someone sends me."

Even if it were reasonable for Don Jr. to claim that an interlocutor for the Russian government just spontaneously sent him an email suggesting collusion without even the merest semblance of an idea that it would be well-received, and it isn't, the fact is that he responded to said email by exclaiming in return, "I love it... Could we do a call first thing next week when I am back?"

I suppose we're meant to believe he "can't help" how he replies to emails someone sends him, either.

* * *

In related news...

Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman at the New York Times: Rancor at White House as Russia Story Refuses to Let the Page Turn.
As Air Force One jetted back from Europe on Saturday, a small cadre of Mr. Trump's advisers huddled in a cabin helping to craft a statement for the president's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., to give to The New York Times explaining why he met last summer with a lawyer connected to the Russian government. Participants on the plane and back in the United States debated how transparent to be in the statement, according to people familiar with the discussions.

Ultimately, the people said, the president signed off on a statement from Donald Trump Jr. for The Times that was so incomplete that it required day after day of follow-up statements, each more revealing than the last. It culminated on Tuesday with a release of emails making clear that Mr. Trump's son believed the Russian lawyer was seeking to meet with him to provide incriminating information about Hillary Clinton as "part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump."
Emphasis mine. To be clear: The White House crafted a statement for Don Jr., the president read and approved that statement, and then Don Jr. issued that statement, which turned out to be mendacious garbage, to the New York Times.

The scope of the cover-up of what the White House clearly understands to be something worth covering up is so obvious that even Bill Kristol can understand what's happening.


Trump has long been raging around the West Wing because the allegations of collusion with Russia just won't go away (since they're accurate), and now it's getting even worse — and even closer to home (literally).

So now he's getting to read cool headlines like "'Category 5 hurricane': White House under siege by Trump Jr.'s Russia revelations" at the Washington Post and "White House aides feeling 'helpless' as Trump Jr. scandal explodes" at Politico.

And note that those headlines are doing their damnedest to make it seem like the Russia stuff is just "happening to" Trump, like an act of god, as opposed to being a shit maelstrom of his own making.

The "fake news" is still being pretty fair to him, all things considered.

Not that he deserves it. Not that that's ever stopped them.

Naturally, the investigation just continues to broaden with every new revelation. At Yahoo News, Michael Isikoff reports that new details have emerged on the Moscow real estate deal that led to the Trump-Kremlin alliance, while at McClatchy, Peter Stone and Greg Gordon report: "Investigators at the House and Senate Intelligence committees and the Justice Department are examining whether the Trump campaign's digital operation — overseen by Jared Kushner — helped guide Russia's sophisticated voter targeting and fake news attacks on Hillary Clinton in 2016."

Everything's coming up Russia for Trump, who is reduced to whining (again) that the entire thing is a witch hunt in defense of his corrupt son.


There are millions of people who believe him. They, like the president and his son — and virtually everyone around them — are dangerously wrong. And that continues to be bad news for the rest of us.
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