On July 8, the New York Times reported that Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner had a previously undisclosed meeting with a Russian lawyer with alleged “connections with the Kremlin.” In an initial response to the story, Trump Jr. said the meeting was “primarily about an adoption program.”
By the next day, the story shifted. The Times reported new details suggesting Trump Jr. took the meeting after being promised “damaging information” about Hillary Clinton.
.. On July 10, the next shoe dropped. This time, the Times alleged Donald Jr. had received an e-mail beforehand making clear that the lawyer was acting as “part of a Russian government effort to aid his father’s candidacy.”
.. In his latest statement, Trump Jr. claims that the lawyer wasn’t a government official, there was no opposition research, and the meeting was mainly about “adoption policy and the Magnitsky act.”
.. In other words, this isn’t the smoking gun that proves actual “collusion” with Russia, but rather evidence that Trump Jr., Manafort, and Kushner tried to collude with Russia.
.. To repeat, it now looks as if the senior campaign team of a major-party presidential candidate intended to meet with an official representative of a hostile foreign power to facilitate that foreign power’s attempt to influence an American election.
.. at long last we can now put to bed the notion that the Russia investigation is little more than frivolous partisan harassment, and it casts in an entirely different light the president’s fury and frustration at its continued progress.
.. As of now, we should have zero confidence that we know all or even most material facts. We should have zero confidence that Trump’s frustration is entirely due to his feeling like an innocent man caught in the crosshairs of crazed conspiracy theorists. It now appears that his son, son-in-law, and campaign chair met with a lawyer who they were told was part of an official Russian government effort to impact the presidential election. The Russian investigation isn’t a witch hunt anymore, if it ever was. It’s a national necessity.
Why some inside the White House see Trump’s media feud as ‘winning’
To President Trump, no place is more comfortable than the middle of a fight.
.. This week had it all: Vicious tweets, nasty nicknames, an entrenched foe in the mainstream media and the reprisal by Trump of one of his favorite roles — the victim.
.. For Trump and his legions of loyalists, the media has become a shared enemy.
“They like him, they believe in him, they have not to any large degree been shaken from him, and the more the media attacks him, the more it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy on the side of the Trump supporters who fervently believe the media treat him unfairly,” said Tony Fabrizio, the chief pollster for Trump’s campaign. “It’s like, ‘Beat me with that sword some more!’ ”
.. Fabrizio estimated that just a quarter of Americans know who Brzezinski is and predicted that conservatives would instinctively side with Trump, as they did when he attacked then-Fox News Channel anchor Megyn Kelly and other media personalities during last year’s campaign.
“Everybody inside the Beltway knows who she is, but the average working guy doesn’t know who she is,” Fabrizio said of Brzezinski.
.. Certainly a big part of the success the president had last year was this sweeping, counterculture pushback against information being dictated to the American people.”
.. Roger Stone, a former Trump adviser and longtime confidant, likened Trump’s attacks on the media to the strategy employed by former president Richard M. Nixon to discredit organizations such as The Post that were breaking stories on the Watergate investigation.
“The difference is Nixon had no Internet-based alternative media [that] would aggressively cover his side of the argument,”
.. West Wing officials viewed CNN’s mistake as a public vindication that the Russia investigation — and its ensuing media coverage — is simply a “witch hunt,”
Cotton Mather: Salem Witch Trials
Burroughs recited a perfect rendition of the Lord’s Prayer while on the gallows, something Mather himself thought impossible for anyone guilty of an alliance with the devil. The crowd was so moved that some wanted to prevent the execution. Mather, mounted on his horse, proclaimed that Burroughs was no ordained minister, and that the “Devil has often been transformed into an Angel of Light.” With those words, under the tearful gaze of an ambivalent crowd the George Burroughs was hanged.
.. Careful analysis of the document, as well as Mather’s own diaries, reveals that he may not have been quite as convinced of the righteousness of the trials as he describes in his book. A cautious foreword to the manuscript reads, “I live by Neighbours that force me to produce these undeserved lines”. Perry Miller describes the whole work as “utter confusion”.
Trump thinks he’s under attack. That’s very dangerous.
President Trump believes he is being persecuted, and that is a frighteningly dangerous mind-set for a man with such vast power.
.. portraying himself as a victim
.. “No politician in history, and I say this with great surety, has been treated worse or more unfairly,”
.. “This is the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history!” he tweeted.