Donald Trump Jr goes on television and makes the Trump-Russia scandal even worse
In recent weeks, Donald Trump has been rather consciously pushing his second-eldest son Eric Trump to the forefront. Perhaps that’s because Trump has finally figured out that his namesake, Donald Trump Jr, is simply too much of an idiot to be relied upon for anything. For some reason, however, Junior turned up on Fox News on Friday night. By the time he was finished, he ended up making the Trump-Russia scandal even worse.
Donald Trump Jr appeared on-air with Fox News host Tucker Carlson to publicly plead his case. He explained that “I took a twenty minute meeting that everyone acknowledges would be standard practice in the campaign. I did twenty-three hours of testimony.” He then began predictably and dishonestly ranting about Hillary Clinton. Junior doesn’t appear to understand that treason is treason, even if it only takes twenty minutes to complete, and that unlike Hillary, he’s committed actual crimes. The real problem for Junior here comes down to two of his own words: “standard practice.”
Trump Jr met with representatives of the Russian government under the belief that he would be given dirt on Clinton. Conspiring with a foreign government to try to alter the outcome of a U.S. election was a felony on his part, whether the Kremlin ultimately gave him any of Clinton’s private information or not. Now he’s admitting that his felonious meeting was “standard practice in the campaign” – which means he’s admitting that others in the Trump campaign had similar meetings.
We already know that Donald Trump campaign officials including Jeff Sessions, Jared Kushner, Carter Page, J.D. Gordon and others all had meetings with the Russian government during the election. We don’t know what took place during most of those meetings. The only Trump-Russia meeting into which we have clear insight is the one arranged by Donald Trump Jr. Now he’s admitting that his meeting – which was a clear cut crime against the United States – was standard practice for the campaign. Thus we now know that the other Trump-Russia meetings were also criminal in nature.
