Sanders says Trump weighed in on the Don Jr. statement “like any father would do”, says there was “no inaccuracy” in the stmt. (via @MSNBC) pic.twitter.com/MH6oTqUylY
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) August 1, 2017
Sarah Huckabee Sanders has been hard at work clarifying a slew of statements and juicy leaks from the Trump camp during a Tuesday briefing. That includes the recent revelation that the President is the one who told Don Jr. to say his meeting with a Russian lawyer was more on the adoption of Russian children by Americans than about Hillary Clinton’s emails. Sanders says that in offering that soundbite, Trump was merely acting “like any father would do” to help his child. She also says there was “no inaccuracy” in the statement.
Regardless of Sanders assurances, she’s actually speaking in direct conflict with the contents of the emails that Don Jr. released, which suggested that he was in fact motivated by the promise of getting “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. Trump’s involvement in crafting Don Jr.’s statement would be ethically problematic for anyone, much less POTUS. But leaks from the White House suggest Trump doesn’t really get the gravity of the situation.
“He refuses to sit still,” one presidential adviser told the Washington Post. “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.”
It already looked questionable that Trump helped craft an excuse for his son, son-in-law, and former campaign manager to engage in a murky meeting with a bunch of people aligned with the Kremlin, but perhaps Sanders is right. Any father would help his child. Yet this situation is beginning to look more and more like a father in a Greek tragedy.