The indictments of former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort and his associate Rick Gates, along with the guilty plea of George Papadopoulos, have shaken Washington and the Trump administration, which quickly entered the spin cycle to downplay the significance and deflect attention to something, anything else. In a questionable move, Carter Page, a Trump campaign foreign policy advisor who’s potentially under investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller as well, sat down with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes for an interview and admitted he “may have” discussed Russia in emails with Papadopoulos while both were working on the campaign.
Hayes opened the interview by congratulating Page on not being indicted, and it only improved from that point. Page then went on to say that he didn’t know George Papadopoulos that well but that he did meet him a few times during the campaign. Page then evaded a question about his role in the campaign, even when Hayes brought up Trump mentioning both Page and Papadopoulos during an interview in 2016. Hayes then asked if the two were on email chains together, and Page responded, “Probably a few.”
Hayes asked if the two were one email chains specifically about Russia. “It may have come up from time to time, again, there’s nothing major,” Page responded, much to Hayes’ shock.
Page then stammered a bit about timelines and insisted his name had been previously dragged through the mud. Page also denied being the unnamed person (in Mueller documents) who suggested a low-level campaign staffer make contact with Russians through Papadopoulos’ connections. That person also reportedly suggested that Papadopoulos should be the low-level campaign staffer to make that contact.