Amid news that Russia was behind Syria gas attack, Trump White House pulls plug on briefing

| 6:01 pm EDT April 10, 2017
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This afternoon the Associated Press confirmed what Palmer Report had first posited days ago (link): that Russia was behind the chemical gas attack in Syria. Shortly thereafter, Donald Trump’s White House panicked and pulled the plug on what was supposed to have been a background briefing on Russia.

ShareBlue caught the switch-up this afternoon when it noticed the New York Daily News had reported that the White House briefing was switched from on-the-record background, to fully off-the-record, just as it was beginning. ShareBlue reporter Tommy Christopher characterized the matter thusly: “as someone who worked as a White House reporter for seven years, beginning a briefing on background and changing it to an off-the-record is something I have never heard of” (link). So what exactly is Trump’s White House suddenly trying to cover up?

In my article from April 6th, I posited that nothing about the Syrian gas attack or Donald Trump’s military response made sense unless Russian President Vladimir Putin had been pulling the strings (link). Today the Associated Press is confirming that Russia knew about the gas attack in advance, and went so far as to blow up a hospital to try to conceal evidence of its involvement (link). The part of my theory that’s not yet been confirmed or refuted is whether Trump knew Russia was behind the Syrian gas attack at the time he launched his own military strike.

So today’s White House panic move raises the question of whether Donald Trump and his people were merely taken so off guard by the Russia news that they weren’t prepared to give a response, or whether this is indeed evidence that Trump and the White House knew all along that Russia was behind it. More shoes will soon drop on this still unraveling storyline. Contribute to Palmer Report