Eyebrows were raised when, after Donald Trump banned the American press from his meeting with the Russian foreign minister and ambassador, Russian state media released pictures of Trump gripping and grinning with the diplomats. It turns out that Trump wasn’t favoring Russian media over U.S. journalists. No, his White House was too incompetent to realize that the person introduced to them as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s personal photographer also worked for the state-owned Tass news agency.
Trump’s team has been made to look weak, and their response is equally weak:
Waaaa, waaaaa, they tricked us!
How could the Russians possibly know it would be so easy to fool this White House? The real question, though, is whether the release of the photos of Trump with Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak—who centered in Michael Flynn’s downfall as national security adviser and Jeff Sessions’ decision to (supposedly) recuse himself from Russia-related decisions—was the only trickery involved. Was the photographer used just to embarrass Trump, or for something more? Experts have pointed to the possibility that photographic equipment could be used to smuggle a listening device into the Oval Office, something that might not have been detected by the usual White House visitor screening process.
Even without any concern over surveillance devices, though, it’s straight-up embarrassing that the incompetents surrounding the popular-vote-losing buffoon didn’t do enough of a background check on the photographer to whom they offered such close access to realize that he wasn’t just a diplomat’s personal photographer. And then had the nerve to whine about the results of their own incompetence.