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Everything old is new again when you’re desperate enough. Donald Trump is struggling to get past the bad look of—once again—feuding with a Gold star family, this time having told the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson that “he knew what he signed up for.” Trump also seemed not to know Johnson’s name when he spoke to his family or Johnson’s wife Myeshia’s name when later insisting that he didn’t say “he knew what he signed up for.” Facing that firestorm, Trump returned to a favorite tactic: trying to change the subject.
Yes, it’s a recycled story from early 2015 that was too weak for its author to successfully defend on Fox News but which The Hill has semi-revived with a story having absolutely zero to do with Hillary Clinton and which Fox News was, of course, talking about this morning. What we’ve known all along is that the big scandalous uranium deal that Trump is desperate to keep talking about was signed off on by nine U.S. agencies and the Canadian government, and that while the State Department was one of the nine U.S. agencies, Clinton wasn’t personally involved in the decision.
Trump is trying to change the subject from his callous disrespect to the family of Sgt. La David Johnson. He’s only too happy to try to change the subject to one of his pet conspiracy theories, one that he’s repeatedly used to try to minimize evidence of his campaign’s collusion with Russian election meddling by linking Clinton and Russia. It’s been a desperate move all along, but his base will eat it up. Again. So remember: this story has been debunked repeatedly. This story was debunked before the New York Times and Washington Post even wrote it up in 2015. And now, it’s a naked attempt to distract from what Trump said to Myeshia Johnson.