Now that Donald Trump Jr. has admitted to exactly the kind of collusion with Russia that he and his father have repeatedly denied, what defense is the White House going to mount? According to an all-too-believable report from Axios, they’ll be using the same old playbook:
In private, sources inside the White House aren't even pretending it's ok.
- They know the Donald Trump Jr. emails that led to his Russia meeting are a terrible story, and mostly they're scrambling to find ways to deflect it and to turn this back against Hillary Clinton or the media.
Yes, somehow it will be Hillary Clinton’s fault that the Russian government wanted to defeat her and Donald Trump’s son, son-in-law, and campaign manager went to a meeting to see if they could get information as part of that Russian government effort.
And obviously the media is totally irresponsible and FAKE NEWS to report any of this. Why, Junior released the emails himself (like a minute ahead of the New York Times reporting on them), so we should ignore what the emails say and take Team Trump’s word for it that there’s nothing bad in the emails or he wouldn’t have released them.
So look for those attacks on Clinton and the media and know them for what they are: a desperate effort to change the subject from something that even Team Trump knows is very, very bad.