Bad Sign for Trump: Team Trump Needs to Backtrack

It isn't the crime.  It is the coverup.   Trump loyalists are scrambling.  They had been selling the wrong story.

   

The former story was that the Russia collusion story was a witch hunt, invented out of nothing by the fake media.   They asserted there is no evidence whatever that Trump's campaign was talking with the Russian government or its representatives.  There was no attempt to collude, period.

The message was clean and simple, but wrong.   

Watch some of them here:   Click here   

Donald Trump, Junior released an email thread an hour before the the New York Times was going to release the same thread, it having been leaked to them from someone inside the White House.  

Information was available for the Trump campaign from the Russian government's hacking. "I love it," Donald Trump, Junior, wrote back, saying, yes, he wanted to meet.   

It is hard to contend that this exchange was ambiguous or that memories are imperfect.  It is right there in the e-mails.  Russian government, helpful to Trump, confidential.  And the response:  "I love it" is not tentative.  It wasn't from some low level campaign volunteer.  The meeting took place with Donald Trump, Junior, Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort.

The conservative media cannot wish this one away. In fact people central to the Trump team did exactly what they had been insisting indignantly they had not done.    Team Trump has to change its story, and it is clear they are frustrated and unhappy.


Now the story is that it wasn't actually criminal.  "This is nowhere near treason," I just heard a pundit assert on Fox.  The frame has changed.   Once one is arguing whether or not something is treason then the very debate is digging the hole deeper.   Now team Trump is asserting:

     **Donald Trump, Junior, is not actually a government employee, therefore he had no actual requirement to report the contact.

     **The three men took the meeting, yes, but they didn't actually pay attention at the meeting, with them all busy on their smart phones answering emails during the meeting.  Besides, the meeting was only a few minutes.   

     **The original cover story that the meeting was about adoptions, not a hope of getting Russian government stolen information on Hillary, is misleading but not actually a direct lie, since adoptions were discussed, once they didn't get what the hoped to get.

     **It was merely improper and foolish, it wasn't criminal.

     **They wanted to collude with the Russian government to get hacked material, but the attempt actually failed, it was just attempted collusion and no actual collusion at this meeting.

Pushback: Fox was lied to by Trump

     **This was just normal opposition research, and getting it from a foreign government is no special deal.

     **This wasn't a crime about threatening American democracy.  It was only a technical election crime, involving getting in-kind contributions from a foreign government.


There are cracks in the solid media wall, but the wall still holds.    Fox hosts and their interviewees are still indignantly changing the subject, saying the real crime is the Hillary Clinton email server.  They are still saying the real issue is the Obama Iran deal.  They are saying that Bill Clinton received oral sex from Monica Lewinsky and was not forthright about it.   

Still,  they are stuck with having sold the wrong story on Trump and the Russians and their previous statements make them look foolish.  They used to say it did not happen and people who suggested it did are lying, offering fake news.   Now they have to argue that, sure, it happened, but it was no big deal because it isn't actually criminal, probably.

Center-right "The Hill" reports fallout.

Fox is in retreat.   When Charles Krauthammer doesn't have Trump's back, then things are starting to change.

There are cracks in the GOP officeholder wall, too.   Mike Pence is protecting himself, putting out a message, saying the incident happened before he was involved in the campaign.   I have nothing whatever to do with this.   GOP Senator Graham says "it's problematic."  Senator Collins says "it's premature to judge."  Senator Rubio says "I don't know much."  Senator Cornyn says Donald Junior "should testify" so then we will know the truth.

Questions raised.  Suspicion.

Trump's problems are exacerbated by the fact that the whole Russian collusion mess has been handled in a manner uncharacteristic for Trump.  Trump's genius has been to do surprising things and forthrightly assert that they are perfectly fine.   Don't apologize.  Instead, double down.   But on Russia Trump has attempted to avoid and minimize, not assert proudly.   As his story has crumbled, with person after person shown to have minimized their filings of contacts, left off important information about conflicts of interest, not reported paid contracts, not reported meetings, then mischaracterizing meetings, Trump has sent the message that he is hiding something and therefore presumably feeling guilty about something.  

Stonewall.  Lawyering up.

Its gets worse.  Everyone is lawyering-up or taking the Fifth Amendment.  Now it looks like a bunker protected by silence, not forthright assertion that what they are doing is darned good and high time.

This is a huge conflict with Trump's brand.   He is acting the way Hillary acted.  He looks crooked.  Trump knows this but he is stuck doing it anyway.  This has got to be a miserable time for Trump.