How Trump's latest Russia spin contradicts his claims during the campaign
Source: Washington Post
How Trump’s latest Russia spin contradicts his claims during the campaign
By Paul Waldman July 17 at 1:35 PM
There’s a transition point that comes in many scandals when the facts make it impossible to sustain the argument the administration’s allies had been using. Specifically, it requires them to go from saying, “These accusations are false; it never happened” to saying, “Sure, it happened, but there’s nothing wrong with it.”
That is where Republicans now find themselves, and there’s a deep irony at work. Donald Trump rode into office on the widespread belief that politics is corrupt and only an outsider like him could clean it up. Now, it looks like his all-purpose excuse for his own misdeeds and those of his family and advisers will be, “Hey, don’t blame me — we all know politics is corrupt!”
You can see it in this tweet President Trump sent this morning:
Link to tweet
As numerous politicians and political professionals from both parties have attested since the story of the meeting between Don Jr., Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort and a group of Russians who were explicitly presented to them as acting on behalf of the Kremlin, that’s not just untrue but absurd. When a hostile foreign government offers you help in your campaign, what you do is call the FBI.
The idea animating Trump’s position is that during a presidential campaign there is virtually no sin or even crime that can’t be justified on the grounds that, well, it’s a campaign. As Fox News personality Jeanine Pirro said in defending Trump, “As someone who’s run for office five times, if the devil called me and said he wanted to set up a meeting to give me opposition research on my opponent, I’d be on the first trolley to Hell to get it.” Or in the words of Sean Hannity, “It always happens. And if anyone says it doesn’t, it’s a lie.”
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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2017/07/17/how-trumps-latest-russia-spin-contradicts-his-claims-during-the-campaign/