The Cost of Taking Advice from Donald Trump A le
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Posted On: 08/01/2017 12:00:00 PM
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The Cost of Taking Advice from Donald Trump
A lesson for the future.
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BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
AUG 1, 2017
It's always good to kick off a summer's morning with the news that the president*'s native gifts for concocting alibis remains remarkably consistent. The Washington Post has the latest masterpiece.
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.
Oh, I'll bet it did. He probably sat down with every member of the staff and made sure that every dependent clause was precise and accurate. And then Air Force One turned entirely to cotton candy and everybody had lovely time.
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."
Over the next three days, multiple accounts of the meeting were provided to the news media as public pressure mounted, with Trump Jr. ultimately acknowledging that he had accepted the meeting after receiving an email promising damaging information about Hillary Clinton as part of a Russian government effort to help his father's campaign.
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.
As special counsel Robert S. Mueller III looks into potential obstruction of justice as part of his broader investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, these advisers worry that the president's direct involvement leaves him needlessly vulnerable to allegations of a coverup .
I'm telling you, nothing gets by Some Advisers.
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At the moment, and that's a phrase that has taken on a kaleidoscopic new meaning in the past seven months, all we know is that the president* was involved in creating a bullshit story to cover for his son, who stupidly took a meeting with some Russians who promised him some juicy ratfcking documents.
At the moment, I'm willing to believe the president*would say or do anything to avoid the realization that he got fewer votes than the other major candidate did.
Honest to god, as much as the state of his personal finances are at the root of all this rank duplicity, so, too, is the fact that he's convinced himself against all mathematics that he won an epochal landslide victory.
If all he did was lie to the newspapers and the networks, alas, he probably remains on the thin side of legal. But one thing we have learned, and one thing of which Robert Mueller is quite aware, is that this particular bull has a positive instinct for finding china shops where none existed before.
Trump, they say, is increasingly acting as his own lawyer, strategist and publicist, often disregarding the recommendations of the professionals he has hired. "He refuses to sit still," the presidential adviser said. "He doesn't think he's in any legal jeopardy, so he really views this as a political problem he is going to solve by himself."
Trump has said that the Russia investigation is "the greatest witch hunt in political history," calling it an elaborate hoax created by Democrats to explain why Clinton lost an election she should have won. Because Trump believes he is innocent, some advisers explained, he therefore does not think he is at any legal risk for a coverup.
In his mind, they said, there is nothing to conceal.
That last sentence has a number of meanings. None of them are comforting for the people who, for whatever reasons, decided to work for this president*.
Them, I do not pretend to understand.
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