The real reason Donald Trump just threw Donald Trump Jr under the bus
Yesterday it was reported that Donald Trump has privately acknowledged to friends that he’s worried about his son Donald Trump Jr’s legal culpability in the Trump-Russia scandal. We all knew Trump would respond to this report explosively on Twitter today, but none of us were quite prepared for what he ended up saying. Trump flat out confessed to the criminal nature of the meeting, before insisting it was somehow legal – and he all but certainly sent Trump Jr to prison in the process.
For reference, here’s what Donald Trump tweeted about the Trump Tower meeting with Russian government representatives: “Fake News reporting, a complete fabrication, that I am concerned about the meeting my wonderful son, Donald, had in Trump Tower. This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics – and it went nowhere. I did not know about it!” Let’s try to break this down, because it changes everything.
First, Donald Trump is finally confessing that this meeting was an attempt at obtaining dirt on Hillary Clinton from the Russians. Regardless of Trump’s “totally legal” claim, legal experts agree that this was a felony attempt at receiving a gift of value from a foreign entity on behalf of a campaign, as well as a felony attempt at receiving stolen goods. That’s before getting to more qualitative charges like treason and/or conspiracy against the United States.
Donald Trump Jr was caught admitting this in an email a long time ago, but this tweet now solidifies Trump Jr’s guilt. The key phrase here is “I did not know about it!” Even as Trump is incriminating his son, he’s insisting that he wasn’t in on the conspiracy. This comes at the end of a week where we learned that Michael Cohen and Rick Gates can both testify that Trump did know. So Trump is throwing his son under the bus in the hope of insulating himself. It’s that last gasp move we all knew he’d make eventually. But why right now? He must think he’s out of options.
