Donald Trump Jr. stopped by Fox and Friends on Tuesday morning to predictably gloat about the House Intelligence Committee Republicans concluding their investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. Of course, the investigation is completely separate than the one being conducted by special counsel Robert Mueller, who is still in the process of interviewing key witnesses.
Yet, Team Trump is calling the House’s findings a win, with the president triumphantly all-caps tweeting about the decision on Monday night. Likewise, Don Jr. was smug when host Brian Kilmeade asked about his infamous Russia meeting, which he now says was totally no biggie.
Honestly, I took a 20 minute meeting which was the biggest waste of time of my life, I didn’t even think about it– I wouldn’t even have remembered the meeting is the real problem. When you’re on a campaign trail like that, you guys, there’s so much going on, like, I didn’t even think about it. By the way, they talk about me not disclosing, I’m not in government, I have no obligation to disclose, I didn’t think about it.
So, to me, it wouldn’t even have occurred to do that. So yes I did this. But the other side when they’re paying — and this is all verified at this point — they’re paying foreign operatives for information from Russia. That’s okay! That’s different. I took a meeting with someone who we had done business with years before. I said, okay fine, I’ll listen to you. I’ll listen. I thought that was pretty much covered under the First Amendment.
Not sure of the First Amendment covers meeting with someone with ties to a hostile foreign power, who — by the admission of Trump Jr.’s own emails — professed to have “high level and sensitive information” with the goal of supporting his father’s presidency. Our founding fathers probably would have had conflicting thoughts about that.