The following article by James Hohmann with Breanne Deppisch and Joanie Greve was posted on the Washington Post website July 12, 2017:
The Trumps are congenitally unable to take personal responsibility.
“In retrospect, I probably would have done things a little differently,” Donald Trump Jr. told Sean Hannity on Fox News last night.
But don’t mistake that for a mea culpa. Because it wasn’t. The president’s namesake dismissed his sitdown last summer with someone he believed to be an agent of the Russian government as “a nothing.”
“Someone sent me an email,” the First Son said. “I can’t help what someone sends me. I read it. I responded accordingly. And if there was something interesting there, I think that’s pretty common. … I wouldn’t have even remembered it until you started scouring through this stuff. It was literally just a wasted 20 minutes, which was a shame.”
See the exchange on Hannity here:
Donald Trump Jr. defends his meeting with Russian lawyer
Trump Jr. posted on Twitter earlier in the day what he claimed was the entirety of the exchange in which he agreed to take a meeting with a “Russian government attorney” who could provide damaging information about Hillary Clinton as part of “Russia and its government’s support” for his dad’s presidential campaign.
“The email exchange showed clearly that Trump Jr. understood he was taking the meeting as a way of channeling information directly from the government of a nation hostile to the United States to his father’s campaign,” Rosalind S. Helderman and John Wagner note. “It is the most concrete public evidence to date suggesting that top Trump campaign aides were eager for Russia’s assistance in the campaign. [Music publicist Rob] Goldstone offered to send the information directly to Trump, who had then largely sealed the Republican nomination for president, but said that because the information was ‘ultra sensitive’ he wanted to contact Trump Jr. first instead.”
“This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government support for Mr. Trump,” Goldstone wrote.
“If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer,” Trump Jr. replied enthusiastically.
He appears to have then forwarded the entire exchange to both campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his brother-in-law, Jared Kushner, who both attended the meeting.
Untangling the web of Donald Trump Jr.
— Perhaps the biggest conceit of Donald Sr.’s rationale for seeking the presidency was his competence as a manager. Many voters assumed that because he is rich and once hosted a successful reality-television show, Trump could effectively lead an organization. The more details that emerge about how his campaign really operated behind the scenes – and how paralyzed his White House is now – the clearer it becomes that the president is in way over his head.
Even more than in normal organizations, the person at the top of any campaign or White House sets the tone that everyone else follows. When the leader plays fast and loose with the rules and the truth, it creates a problematic culture.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who believes Trump Jr. needs to testify before Congress as soon as possible, said yesterday that no one on his 2008 presidential campaign would have ever agreed to take such a meeting. “Another shoe drops from the centipede every few days,” the Arizona senator told The Weekly Standard. “I can assure you the people around me would not be inclined to do that kind of thing, especially not one of my sons. ‘Cause my sons—they’re in the military. You know, they’d probably be court-martialed.”
What we know about Donald Trump Jr.’s Russia meeting
— Five juicy stories posted overnight about deep dysfunction inside the Trump orbit. To varying degrees, each shows a president and his family blaming others for problems they themselves are responsible for creating. It’s the continuation of a pattern that goes back decades.
1. “The White House has been thrust into chaos … as the president fumes against his enemies and senior aides circle one another with suspicion,” The Post’s Philip Rucker and Ashley Parker report. Their report is based on interviews with more than a dozen West Wing officials, outside advisers, friends and associates of the president and his family.
“They said that the president’s frustration is based on the media coverage of his son’s actions, as opposed to the actions themselves…Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and senior adviser; Jared Kushner, her husband and another senior adviser; and first lady Melania Trump have been privately pressing the president to shake up his team — most specifically by replacing Reince Priebus as the White House chief of staff …The mind-set of Trump Jr. over the past few days has evolved from distress to anger to defiance, according to people close to him. … In the West Wing, meanwhile, fear of the Mueller probe effectively paralyzed senior staffers as they struggled to respond. … (Read the whole story here.)
2. “Advisers said the president was annoyed not so much by his son as by the headlines. But three people close to the legal team said he had also trained his ire on Marc E. Kasowitz, his longtime lawyer, who is leading the team of private lawyers representing him,” the New York Times’s Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman wrote. “Mr. Trump, who often vents about advisers in times of trouble, has grown disillusioned by Mr. Kasowitz’s strategy … The strain, though, exists on both sides. Mr. Kasowitz and his colleagues have been deeply frustrated by the president. And they have complained that Mr. Kushner has been whispering in the president’s ear about the Russia investigations and stories while keeping the lawyers out of the loop … The president’s lawyers view Mr. Kushner as an obstacle and a freelancer more concerned about protecting himself than his father-in-law … While no ultimatum has been delivered, the lawyers have told colleagues that they cannot keep operating that way, raising the prospect that Mr. Kasowitz may resign.”
3. Despite the fact that the Russian investigations involve “reams” of classified material, Kasowitz does not have a security clearance, nor does he expect to seek one. ProPublica’s Justin Elliott and Jesse Eisinger report: “Several lawyers who have represented presidents and senior government officials said they could not imagine handling a case so suffused with sensitive material without a clearance. ‘No question in my mind — in order to represent President Trump in this matter you would have to get a very high level of clearance because of the allegations involving Russia,’ said Robert Bennett, who served as President Bill Clinton’s personal lawyer. One possible explanation for Kasowitz’s decision not to pursue a clearance: He might have trouble getting one. Past and present employees of [Kasowitz’s firm] said in interviews that Kasowitz has struggled intermittently with alcohol abuse, leading to a stint in rehab in the winter of 2014-15. Several people [said] that Kasowitz has been drinking in recent months…”
4. “The president is using his relatively light schedule to watch TV and fume about the latest scandal,” Politico’s Tara Palmeri and Josh Dawsey report. “Top West Wing aides are exasperated by their limited ability to steer the damage control and the risk that more damaging news has yet to emerge. … One Trump adviser said the White House was ‘essentially helpless’ because the conduct happened during an “anything goes” campaign that had few rules. This person said he had spoken to several people in the White House on Tuesdayand that ‘none of them knew anything about Donald Trump Jr.’s meetings’ … Since Trump Jr. is not a White House employee and is represented by his own lawyer, the White House communications operation has had to take a back seat, while holding its breath for the next batch of revelations. … The lack of full-throttle response from the White House has lowered morale internally. ‘How much longer can we assume that the American people don’t care about Russia?’ one White House official mused.”
5. “In private, Trump has raged … with most of his ire directed at the media, not his son, according to people who have spoken to him in recent days,” per the Associated Press’s Jonathan Lemire and Julie Pace. “The president, in conversations with confidants, has questioned the quality of advice he has received from senior staff, including (Priebus). … An unusual statement Saturday night from the legal team’s spokesman Mark Corallo appeared to claim Trump Jr., Kushner and Manafort were duped into meeting with the Russian lawyers, and was viewed as particularly unhelpful by senior White House officials.”
Trump rallied to his son’s defense on Twitter this morning:
View the post here.