Press: A lame string of excuses

Every day, the excuses coming out of the Trump White House for Donald Trump Jr.’s June 9, 2016, meeting with Russian operatives at Trump Tower become more and more ridiculous.

Let’s remember, first of all, that for an entire year, the whole gang — Mike Pence, Reince Priebus, Sean Spicer, Kellyanne Conway, and Donald Trump father and son — denied there were any meetings with any Russians about anything. And nobody was more emphatic than Donald Jr. “It’s disgusting. It’s so phony. … I can’t think of bigger lies,” he told CNN. Which turned out to be the biggest lie of all.

{mosads}Now, suddenly, they’ve moved the goal posts. The new White House spin is: Yes, there were meetings, but blah, blah, blah. And here’s where we get one lame excuse after another, as heard from Trump attorney Jay Sekulow on last Sunday’s talk shows, defending Donald Jr.’s meeting.

Lame Excuse Number One: Yes, son Donald Jr. did hold a meeting with Russians, but he didn’t break any laws. There was nothing illegal about it.

No! That’s not the point. Legal or not, the point is: There was a meeting with Russian officials, which they’d been lying about and trying to keep secret for more than a year — and which, as Junior’s emails prove, was held exclusively to gather damaging information on Hillary Clinton from the Russian government.

Lame Excuse Number Two: Yes, there was a meeting, but nothing happened. The Russians didn’t produce any good stuff on Hillary.

No! The point is: Donald Jr. still had a meeting for the purpose of getting dirt from the Russians on Hillary. Whether what they delivered was helpful or not is irrelevant. As conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote, “bungled collusion is still collusion.”

Lame Excuse Number Three: Yes, there was a meeting, but the Secret Service didn’t do its job. They should never have let those Russians in.

No! Oh, please. Blaming the men and women willing to take a bullet for the president? How low can they go? The fact is, at the time, Donald Trump did not yet have Secret Service protection. He was not yet a “protectee.” So the Secret Service did not vet people coming to meet with him.

Lame Excuse Number Four: Yes, there was a meeting, but Daddy Trump didn’t know anything about it — not beforehand, not after, not until we all learned about last week from The New York Times.

No! As tight as that family is, you really think the son would learn that his father’s former Moscow business partner was sending an intermediary with blockbuster stuff on Hillary and he wouldn’t tell his old man? Besides, why should we believe Trump about that when he’s lied about everything else in connection with the meeting?

This whole string of excuses shows just how desperate the White House is. The fact is, a whole bunch of people around Donald Trump had a whole bunch of meetings with Russian officials. They tried to cover them up, but they got caught.

That’s not necessarily collusion, but it sure looks like it.

Press is host of “The Bill Press Show” on Free Speech TV and author of “Buyer’s Remorse: How Obama Let Progressives Down.”

The views expressed by this author are their own and are not the views of The Hill.