Here Is Another Report That Trump Lied About Russia

It is constantly infuriating to me that so many people are already completely inured to news of Donald Trump's possible collusion with Russia and the subsequent cover-up — but I also understand it, because every day, every damn day, is a fresh new hell; a reminder that we are being governed by truly terrible people, who vigorously endeavor to destroy everything we value.

It is exhausting to maintain attention, no less outrage, but now is a moment to again muster our gumption, as much as we are able, because fuck no this is not okay.

Ashley Parker, Carol D. Leonnig, Philip Rucker, and Tom Hamburger at the Washington Post: Trump Dictated Son's Misleading Statement on Meeting with Russian Lawyer.

On the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Germany last month, [Donald] Trump's advisers discussed how to respond to a new revelation that Trump's oldest son had met with a Russian lawyer during the 2016 campaign — a disclosure the advisers knew carried political and potentially legal peril.

The strategy, the advisers agreed, should be for Donald Trump Jr. to release a statement to get ahead of the story. They wanted to be truthful, so their account couldn't be repudiated later if the full details emerged.

But within hours, at the president's direction, the plan changed.

Flying home from Germany on July 8 aboard Air Force One, Trump personally dictated a statement in which Trump Jr. said that he and the Russian lawyer had "primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children" when they met in June 2016, according to multiple people with knowledge of the deliberations. The statement, issued to the New York Times as it prepared an article, emphasized that the subject of the meeting was "not a campaign issue at the time."

The claims were later shown to be misleading.

That's a very polite way of saying they were a fucking lie. And here is a polite way of saying that the president is a corrupt nightmare at the circle of a collection of ethics-free reprobates: "The extent of the president's personal intervention in his son's response, the details of which have not previously been reported, adds to a series of actions that Trump has taken that some advisers fear could place him and some members of his inner circle in legal jeopardy."

If nothing else, this incident should put to bed any lingering notion that Trump is somehow "out of the loop" on any of this shit. He is not.

It's long past time that anyone should believe Trump "isn't aware" of anything. The micromanager knows everything. https://t.co/zEPilMPAZN

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) August 1, 2017

Trump tests the limits of the unearned good faith that the media is willing to extend to white men. At this point, if the political press continues to suggest, incredibly, that Trump hasn't been consciously leading the corruption and its subsequent (attempted) concealment, we have to believe that there simply are no limits to how much good faith they will afford him.

It beggars belief that anyone would continue to buy this line of bullshit, but surely they are, because Jared Kushner is still busy selling it.

Jenna McLaughlin at Foreign Policy: Kushner to Interns: Trump Team Too Disorganized to Collude with Russia.

Donald Trump's election team could not have colluded with Russia because they were barely talking to each other, according to Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law and top White House advisor.

"They thought we colluded, but we couldn't even collude with our local offices," Kushner told congressional interns during a private talk at the Capitol Visitor Center in Washington on Monday afternoon.

What a convenient "leak" — another suggestion that Team Trump is just mired in chaos and incompetence, so they couldn't possibly have orchestrated a coup with the assistance of a foreign adversary, followed by the shockingly quick (so far) process of transforming the U.S. presidency into an authoritarian dictatorship. Haha of course not! They're just a bunch of bumbling nincompoops, and anyone who would suggest they're actually savvy agents of destruction is just a hysterical alarmist who should definitely be ignored.

What you're not supposed to notice is that, yes, they are indeed incredibly ineffective at running a traditional, democratic, functional executive branch — but that was never the objective.

Remember how I spent the entire campaign warning that Donald Trump was dangerous? That's why. It's because he was never running to be a president.

Of course he's incompetent, but competency is beside the point when the objective is ruination.

Trump doesn't know shit about a lot of shit, but he knows that.