It's almost impressive how terrible he is at this whole "politics" thing.
It must be weird to be Donald Trump Jr. Like if you asked me what I did this weekend, I would say, "Oh, not much. Just hung out with my girlfriend and dog. Did a little work. Saw Spider-Man." Not too exciting, but nice. Now if I asked Donald Trump Jr. how his was, he'd have to say something like, "Oh, you know. The New York Times reported about how I met with a Kremlin-connected lawyer who was promising me damaging information on Hillary Clinton, which certainly looks bad considering the investigation into collusion between my dad's campaign and Russia... Also, I had a nice brunch." And what's even weirder still is that the above would be Donnie Jr. telling the version of the weekend that made him look the best. In reality, Donnie took a bad situation for him and his father and made it so much worse.
You see, in that New York Times piece, Trump Jr. gave the following statement:
In a statement on Sunday, Donald Trump Jr. said he had met with the Russian lawyer at the request of an acquaintance. “After pleasantries were exchanged,” he said, “the woman stated that she had information that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Ms. Clinton. Her statements were vague, ambiguous and made no sense. No details or supporting information was provided or even offered. It quickly became clear that she had no meaningful information.”
He said she then turned the conversation to adoption of Russian children and the Magnitsky Act, an American law that blacklists suspected Russian human rights abusers. The law so enraged President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia that he retaliated by halting American adoptions of Russian children.
“It became clear to me that this was the true agenda all along and that the claims of potentially helpful information were a pretext for the meeting,” Mr. Trump said.
Pay attention to the end of Trump Jr.'s statement. By acknowledging that "claims of potentially helpful information were a pretext for the meeting," Trump is saying that he took the meeting because he had in fact been promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton from a Russian source, but that it was no big deal because the lawyer didn't deliver. Interesting way of thinking about it, Don. Let's ask anyone who appeared on To Catch A Predator how that argument holds up in court. Oh, sorry. They're not answering the phone. Because they're probably in jail now. (On top of all of that, he apparently had a different explanation for the meeting when he talked to the Times on Saturday. Hm.)
So, yes, Donald Trump Jr., in attempting to deny the Times' accusations, confirmed the most damning piece of the report: That Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner met with a Russian government-connected lawyer under the "pretext" that she had information that the Trump campaign could use against Hillary Clinton. But if that still doesn't seem "collusion-y" enough for you, let's take a look at what George W. Bush's ethics lawyer had to say about it:
And Trump Jr.'s "acquaintance" who arranged the meeting? Well, according to the Washington Post it was a music publicist named Rob Goldstone. And not to go into tin-foil hat land, but here's what Goldstone posted on Instagram the day after the election:
Somewhere Robert Mueller is adding names to a list of people to interview as Donald Sr. gets nervous. I would say that Donald Jr. is nervous too, but based on his showing here, I'm not sure he's smart enough to understand what he did wrong.
