The following commentary by Greg Sargent was posted on the Washington Post website August 13, 2018:
Despite President Trump’s tweets, meeting with a foreign power to get ‘dirt’ is not opposition research, argues deputy editorial page editor Ruth Marcus. (Adriana Usero/The Washington Post)
President Trump has spent the past year and a half emphatically declaring that there was “no collusion” between his campaign and Russia, adamantly and angrily insisting that any suggestion to the contrary is nothing but a “hoax.”
Trump is now trying out a new line, which looks a little something like this: There was “no collusion” … “to the best of my knowledge.”
The Post has a remarkable piece reporting that Donald Trump Jr.’s presence on the campaign trail is in major demand among GOP candidates. Trump Jr. energizes the Trump base, in spite of the fact — or rather because of the fact — that he may be in legal jeopardy, as special counsel Robert S. Mueller III scrutinizes Trump Jr.’s role in the Trump Tower meeting and its aftermath. For many Trump voters who have been relentlessly told that Mueller is leading a “deep-state coup” against the president, Trump Jr. represents a galvanizing, heroic figure who is both resisting and getting unfairly persecuted by that coup.