Lindsey Graham has essentially confirmed that Trump did indeed call African nations "shithole" countries.

Courtesy of NBC News: 

Sen. Lindsey Graham did not deny Friday that President Donald Trump called certain nations "s---hole" countries, adding that he "said [his] piece" in response to the president's "comments" at a meeting with lawmakers. 

The South Carolina Republican did not rebut an account from Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., of a Thursday meeting on bipartisan immigration legislation that both attended. On Friday, Durbin said that Trump "repeatedly" said "hate-filled things" at the meeting and called African nations "s---hole" countries. 

Durbin added that Graham spoke up in response to Trump's comments and said it took courage to do so. 

"I appreciate Senator Durbin's statements and have enjoyed working with him and many others on this important issue," Graham said in a statement. "I believe it is vitally important to come to a bipartisan solution to the immigration and border challenges we face today. I am committed to working with Republicans and Democrats to find common ground so we can move forward."

So despite Trump's denial earlier today here are two Senators, both present at the meeting, confirming that he did indeed make those disgusting remarks.

In other words they are calling him a liar.

Which makes this next story very troubling.

Courtesy of the Washington Examiner:  

Sens. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and David Perdue, R-Ga., defended President Trump Friday after reports that he referred to Haiti and various African nations as "shithole countries" during a meeting at the White House. 

In a statement, the pair of GOP immigration hawks said they "do not recall" the president making those remarks and hit Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., for not "negotiating in good faith" by making what they call an "accusation." 

“President Trump brought everyone to the table this week and listened to both sides. But regrettably, it seems that not everyone is committed to negotiating in good faith," Cotton and Perdue said. 

"In regards to Senator Durbin’s accusation, we do not recall the President saying these comments specifically but what he did call out was the imbalance in our current immigration system, which does not protect American workers and our national interest," they said. "We, along with the President, are committed to solving an issue many in Congress have failed to deliver on for decades.”

So not only did Donald Trump lie about what he said in that meeting, but these two Republican Senators also lied in order to cover for him.

And on Fox News they suggested that Trump was just talking like everyday Americans talk to each other.

"This is how the forgotten men and women of America talk at the bar" — @JesseBWatters on Trump's 's---hole' remark pic.twitter.com/pFwBHVIMY7

— TV News HQ (@TVNewsHQ) January 11, 2018

Courtesy of HuffPo:

After The Washington Post on Thursday afternoon first reported Trump’s remarks at a White House meeting with lawmakers, “The Five” co-host Jesse Watters shrugged off the slur as the way ordinary Americans talk about “Haiti people.” 

“If it’s true, this is how the forgotten men and women in America talk at the bar,” Watters said. “This is how Trump relates to people. If you’re at a bar, and you’re from Wisconsin, and you’re thinking, ‘They’re bringing in a bunch of Haiti people, or El Salvadorians, or people from Niger.’ This is how some people talk.” 

No, that's the way people at Fox News talk.

I am not typically a big Lindsey Graham fan, but at least he had enough integrity to not only confront Trump over those remarks, but also to refuse to lie for him in order to cover them up.

Look at that, the bar is now so low in the Republican party that we are now congratulating them for not lying about racist comments made by their president.

White House officials found a meeting between Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel "humiliating."

Courtesy of Raw Story: 

President Donald Trump appeared to know little, if anything, about international trade deals during an exchange with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in March this year. White House officials reportedly characterized the talk as “humiliating.” 

The Republican Trump asked Merkel about creating a new, bilateral trade deal between Germany and the U.S., even though, as a member of the European Union, Germany cannot strike such a deal without the other 27 members of the union, according to The New York Times. 

Merkel was afraid to fully correct Trump since White House aides told German officials the four-term chancellor had been condescending to Trump during one of their first phone calls. 

Instead, Merkel eased into an explanation that an agreement could be reached in concert with the EU. 

“So it could be bilateral?” Trump asked Merkel, who nodded, according to those in the meeting. Trump responded: “That’s great.” 

Trump then turned to Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross and said: “Wilbur, we’ll negotiate a bilateral trade deal with Europe.” German officials were reportedly relieved that no incident occurred, but White House officials told The Times they saw the exchange as “humiliating.”

Every day. Every single day there is yet another reason to be ashamed of who is running this country. 

Angela Merkel literally had to talk to this idiot as she would a small child, while also hoping that she did not hurt his tiny feelings and cause an international incident.

So now that Russian lawyer is saying that Donald Trump Jr. offered her a quid pro quo for information on Hillary Clinton.

Courtesy of Bloomberg:  

A Russian lawyer who met with President Donald Trump’s oldest son last year says he indicated that a law targeting Russia could be re-examined if his father won the election and asked her for written evidence that illegal proceeds went to Hillary Clinton’s campaign. 

The lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, said in a two-and-a-half-hour interview in Moscow that she would tell these and other things to the Senate Judiciary Committee on condition that her answers be made public, something it hasn’t agreed to. She has received scores of questions from the committee, which is investigating possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. Veselnitskaya said she’s also ready -- if asked -- to testify to Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

Veselnitskaya said she went to the New York meeting to show Trump campaign officials that major Democratic donors had evaded U.S. taxes and to lobby against the so-called Magnitsky law that punishes Russian officials for the murder of a Russian tax accountant who accused the Kremlin of corruption.

“Looking ahead, if we come to power, we can return to this issue and think what to do about it,’’ Trump Jr. said of the 2012 law, she recalled. “I understand our side may have messed up, but it’ll take a long time to get to the bottom of it,” he added, according to her.

Veselnitskaya also said Trump Jr. requested financial documents showing that money that allegedly evaded U.S. taxes had gone to Clinton’s campaign. She didn’t have any and described the 20-minute meeting as a failure.

According to the email that British publicist Rob Goldstone sent to Junior in order to set up this meeting, there was really no doubt that Veselnitskaya was representing the Kremlin and "its government’s support for Mr. Trump."

That means Junior knew he was communicating with a Russian government operative, and still he was offering to make a deal to change American policy in order to get information, that they likely discovered through illegal hacking, that the campaign could then use against his father's political opponent.

But remember, according to Donald Trump there is NO evidence of collusion.

Oh yeah, I think Robert Mueller is definitely going to want to talk to this woman.

Even with the Mueller investigation bearing down like a freight train, Trump is still open to having a meeting with Vladimir Putin during his trip.

"I'm not a puppet. You're the puppet."

Courtesy of WaPo: 

President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin may meet next week at an economic summit in Vietnam, but there is scant optimism in Russia that face-to-face talks will yield any breakthroughs on the long list of issues that divide Washington and Moscow. 

Sanctions against Russia, tensions in Syria, the threat of ­military conflict in North Korea and the stalemate over Ukraine top the litany of seemingly in­trac­table differences in the U.S.-Russia relationship. 

Looming above it all is the sense in Moscow that the closer special counsel Robert S. Mueller III comes to Trump’s inner circle in his investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, the less likely the U.S. president will be to try to reverse the downward spiral with Russia. 

Trump, who set out Friday for a 12-day trip to Asia that will take him to Japan, South Korea, China and the Philippines, told Fox News on Thursday that it was possible he could meet with the Russian leader for the second time. Trump is scheduled to appear at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Danang, Vietnam, which Putin is also scheduled to attend. 

“We may have a meeting with Putin,” he said. “And again, Putin is very important because they can help us with North Korea. They can help us with Syria. We have to talk about Ukraine.”

Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said that “we aren’t ruling out a Putin-Trump meeting in Vietnam” and that the details “are being coordinated now.” 

One has to ask at this point, "Does it even matter anymore?"

I mean does anybody still not believe that Trump is Putin's Manchurian candidate, and that Trump is , as Stephen Colbert so eloquently stated, Putin's "c**k holster?"

And if there are such people can somebody direct me to the cave that they are living in so that I can interview them?

The Russian lawyer who met with Junior in Trump Tower received her talking points from the Kremlin beforehand.

Courtesy of the New York Times:

Natalia V. Veselnitskaya arrived at a meeting at Trump Tower in June 2016 hoping to interest top Trump campaign officials in the contents of a memo she believed contained information damaging to the Democratic Party and, by extension, Hillary Clinton. The material was the fruit of her research as a private lawyer, she has repeatedly said, and any suggestion that she was acting at the Kremlin’s behest that day is anti-Russia “hysteria.” 

But interviews and records show that in the months before the meeting, Ms. Veselnitskaya had discussed the allegations with one of Russia’s most powerful officials, the prosecutor general, Yuri Y. Chaika. And the memo she brought with her closely followed a document that Mr. Chaika’s office had given to an American congressman two months earlier, incorporating some paragraphs verbatim. 

The coordination between the Trump Tower visitor and the Russian prosecutor general undercuts Ms. Veselnitskaya’s account that she was a purely independent actor when she sat down with Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, and Paul J. Manafort, then the Trump campaign chairman. 

It also suggests that emails from an intermediary to the younger Mr. Trump promising that Ms. Veselnitskaya would arrive with information from Russian prosecutors were rooted at least partly in fact — not mere “puffery,” as the president’s son later said.

This almost gt lost in all of the talk about the Mueller investigation indictments yesterday, but it is a very important piece of the puzzle and deserves attention. 

Not only does this indicate that Veselnitskaya lied, which is to be expected, but that Don. Jr. also lied, which come to think of it should be expected as well I suppose.

However if Junior lied to investigators while under oath, this could be a very big deal indeed.

Now the question to ask is exactly WHAT did this Russian lawyer bring to Junior's attention, and why was it not used in the campaign? Or was it?

Robert Mueller wants to interview White House staffers who witnessed Trump dictating that letter which provided false information about Junior's Trump Tower meeting.

Courtesy of CNN:

Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team has approached the White House about interviewing staffers who were aboard Air Force One when the initial misleading statement about Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower was crafted, three sources familiar with the conversations said. 

The special counsel's discussions with the White House are the latest indication that Mueller's investigators are interested in the response to the Trump Tower meeting. Mueller wants to know how the statement aboard Air Force One was put together, whether information was intentionally left out and who was involved, two of the sources said. 

Mueller's questions could go to the issue of intent and possible efforts to conceal information during an obstruction of justice investigation. The answers to Mueller's questions also could illuminate the level of anxiety surrounding the meeting and the decision-making that followed. 

The interviews with White House staffers who were aboard Air Force One have not begun, the sources said. They currently involve only a small number of people, but the sources cautioned that number could increase. At this time, Mueller has not asked to interview President Trump. 

I think that is where all of this is leading. To an interview with Donald Trump.

And that makes sense because we KNOW he is going to lie.

That is ALL he ever does. 

Once in that witness chair Trump will ignore the advice of his attorneys and start digging himself into a hole that no amount of presidential powers will be able to extricate him from.

Trump's only option to protect himself is to find a way to fire Mueller, and if he does THAT his chances of being impeached will only increase.

To put it simply, he is fucked!

Donald Trump Jr. testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Courtesy of the New York Times:

Donald Trump Jr. told Senate investigators on Thursday that he set up a June 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer because he was intrigued that she might have damaging information about Hillary Clinton, saying it was important to learn about Mrs. Clinton’s “fitness” to be president. 

(Yes the son of perhaps the most unfit individual to ever sit in the Oval Office, was worried that a woman who served as the First Lady of the country, was elected to two terms in the Senate, and who also served as America's Secretary of State, was not fit for office. Seriously?) 


But nothing came of the Trump Tower meeting, he said, and he was adamant that he never colluded with the Russian government’s campaign to disrupt last year’s presidential election. 

In a prepared statement during an interview with Senate Judiciary Committee investigators, the younger Mr. Trump said he was initially conflicted when he heard that the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, might have damaging information about Mrs. Clinton. Despite his interest, he said, he always intended to consult with his own lawyers about the propriety of using any information that Ms. Veselnitskaya, who has ties to the Kremlin, gave him at the meeting. 

A copy of Mr. Trump’s statement was obtained by The New York Times.

Junior admitted that he sought legal counsel after the meeting which suggests that he knew what we was doing was wrong. 

“To the extent they had information concerning the fitness, character or qualifications of a presidential candidate, I believed that I should at least hear them out,” he said. “Depending on what, if any, information they had, I could then consult with counsel to make an informed decision as to whether to give it further consideration.”

Junior also claims that the meeting was  disappointing: 

“As it later turned out, my skepticism was justified. The meeting provided no meaningful information and turned out not to be about what had been represented.”

I guess he felt it would have been so much more productive if he received illegally obtained dirt on Hillary instead.

Junior also stated that his response "I love it" was simply a colloquial way of saying that he appreciated the fact that his friend, Rob Goldstone, had reached out to him.

He did not elaborate to explain why he would love it even more in the summer.

The Post also mentions that Junior's story about this meeting has changed multiple times, the difference this time is that this version is being told to the Senate Judiciary Committee, so if Trump is lying or changed his story later, he could be looking at some jail time.

And that is important to remember, since according to CNN Junior also provided this response: 

Trump Jr. was explicitly asked whether he either took any of the Russian participants in the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting to see his father -- now President Donald Trump -- or whether he told his father about the meeting after, sources said. He insisted he did neither. 

Asked why his father promised the next day that dirt was coming on Hillary Clinton, Trump Jr. told Senate staffers that's just the way his father talks.

I think that is evidence that he already perjured himself right there. 

Jared Kushner releases statement hoping to put an end to questions about Russian contacts. Fat chance.

The entire statement can be read here at CNN.

In it Kushner calls into question news reports of contacts he had with the Russian ambassador, which he claims he cannot remember and has no records of ever making.

Kushner also claims that of course he had multiple contacts with representatives of foreign governments during the campaign since that was the job assigned to him by his father-in-law: 

My father-in-law asked me to be a point of contact with these foreign countries. These were not contacts that I initiated, but, over the course of the campaign, I had incoming contacts with people from approximately 15 countries. To put these requests in context, I must have received thousands of calls, letters and emails from people looking to talk or meet on a variety of issues and topics, including hundreds from outside the United States. While I could not be responsive to everyone, I tried to be respectful of any foreign government contacts with whom it would be important to maintain an ongoing, productive working relationship were the candidate to prevail. To that end, I called on a variety of people with deep experience, such as Dr. Henry Kissinger, for advice on policy for the candidate, which countries/representatives with which the campaign should engage, and what messaging would resonate. In addition, it was typical for me to receive 200 or more emails a day during the campaign. I did not have the time to read every one, especially long emails from unknown senders or email chains to which I was added at some later point in the exchange.

Kushner also claims that when he submitted his initial paperwork for his security clearance that it was submitted prematurely by his assistant and did not include his contacts with ANYBODY from a foreign government, not just the Russians.

He further denies working to establish a back channel to communicate with the Russians, and claims that was a misrepresentation of a meeting he had with Russian Ambassador Kislyak. (At least this is one contact he admits to.)

As for that infamous meeting with Junior and the Russian attorney, this is how Kushner characterized it:

In June 2016, my brother-in-law, Donald Trump Jr. asked if I was free to stop by a meeting on June 9 at 3:00 p.m. The campaign was headquartered in the same building as his office in Trump Tower, and it was common for each of us to swing by the other's meetings when requested. He eventually sent me his own email changing the time of the meeting to 4:00 p.m. That email was on top of a long back and forth that I did not read at the time. As I did with most emails when I was working remotely, I quickly reviewed on my iPhone the relevant message that the meeting would occur at 4:00 PM at his office. Documents confirm my memory that this was calendared as "Meeting: Don Jr.| Jared Kushner." No one else was mentioned.

So essentially Kushner's claim is that he and Junior invited each other to meetings all of the time, and that he did not know what this was about, and did not read the top of the email with said  "Russia-Clinton-private and confidential."

Uh huh.

Kushner then claims that the Russian attorney started talking about "adoptions," which we now know is code for "sanctions," and that he was uninterested and secretly emailed his secretary to call his cell phone in order to give him an excuse to leave the meeting early.

He then forgot all about this meeting until he was reminded about it by his attorneys.

One interesting side note is that Kushner claims that he received an email from someone referring to themselves as "Guccifer400" who claimed to have Trump's tax returns and tried to blackmail him into paying 52 bitcoins.

Kushner characterized this as a hoax. 

At the end of the statement Kushner writes:

I did not collude, nor know of anyone else in the campaign who colluded, with any foreign government. I had no improper contacts. I have not relied on Russian funds to finance my business activities in the private sector. I have tried to be fully transparent with regard to the filing of my SF-86 form, above and beyond what is required. Hopefully, this puts these matters to rest. 

Actually I seriously doubt this puts anything to rest. And I would suggest that once the various investigative bodies get a look at some of this Kushner paperwork they will have even more questions for him to answer.

Also keep in mind that Mr. Transparent is refusing to testify to any of this under oath.

Even though doing so is typically how people with nothing to hide, prove they have nothing to hide.

Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort are all scheduled to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee next week.

Courtesy of the Independent:  

Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Jr and former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort are to testify before the US Senate Judiciary Committee in relation to a meeting with a Russian lawyer who promised to provide incriminating information about Hillary Clinton. 

The meeting has come under intense scrutiny as part of investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 US election and possible collusion on the part of the Trump campaign. 

Mr Trump Jr and Mr Manafort are to appear in front of the committee on July 26, but Mr Kushner is due to appear on July 24 in a closed session.

Mr Kushner’s lawyer Abbe Lowell said his client is voluntarily cooperating with the congressional probes into the now notorious meeting. 

In addition, Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who organised the meeting with Mr Trump Jr, has also said she would be happy to testify.

Oh I am DEFINITELY clearing my calendar to watch this.

I just wish that Kushner's was an open door testimony as well.

Maybe he is just afraid that people will mock his little boy voice if he appears on television.

But don't worry he is certainly not out of the woods yet.

Courtesy of Newsweek: 

The Congressional oversight body that holds U.S. employees accountable and exposes government fraud and abuse voted unanimously Wednesday to investigate why senior Trump administration officials have been granted security clearances. 

Senior advisors to the president, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions were all given security clearances after “omitting significant information about foreign contacts from their applications,” said a statement from Illinois House Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi.

And the noose gets a little bit tighter.

P.S. After I wrote this I saw a few talking heads on TV suggesting that Junior and Manafort would be idiots to agree to show up for this hearing, and I got a little worried.

But then Senator Dianne Feinstein came along to put those concerns to rest:  

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said Thursday she isn't concerned about Donald Trump Jr. and Paul Manafort agreeing to testify before a Senate panel, because if they don't "they'll be subpoenaed." 

"Am I concerned? No, I'm not concerned, because if they don't they'll be subpoenaed," Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, told reporters.

And there you have it.

Junior and Manafort might TRY to avoid testifying next week, but they will ultimately testify one way or the other. 

During G20 Summit there was a second, hour long meeting, between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin that nobody had heard about.

Courtesy of the New York Times: 

Hours into a dinner with world leaders who had gathered for the Group of 20 summit meeting, President Trump left his chair at the sprawling banquet table and headed to where President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was seated. 

The two presidents had met earlier in the day for the first time and, as the White House put it, had developed a rapport even as they talked about Russia’s interference in the United States’ 2016 elections. 

The July 7 meeting in Hamburg, Germany, was the single most scrutinized of the Trump presidency. But it turned out there was another encounter: a one-on-one discussion over dinner that lasted as long as an hour and relied solely on a Kremlin-provided interpreter. 

No presidential relationship has been more dissected than the one between Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin, a dynamic only heightened by the swirl of investigations into whether Mr. Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia to sway the election in his favor. Nevertheless, the meeting was confirmed by the White House only on Tuesday, after reports surfaced that some of the guests had been surprised that it occurred. 

The dinner discussion caught the attention of other leaders around the table, some of whom later remarked privately on the odd spectacle of an American president seeming to single out the Russian leader for special attention at a summit meeting that included some of the United States’ staunchest, oldest allies.

What was significant about this impromptu meeting, that TRUMP clearly sought out, is that it was not reported by the White House, Trump had no similar interactions with other world leaders, and no American official was involved.

Oh, and it was also weird: 

“Pretty much everyone at the dinner thought this was really weird, that here is the president of the United States, who clearly wants to display that he has a better relationship personally with President Putin than any of us, or simply doesn’t care,” said Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group, a New York-based research and consulting firm, who said he had heard directly from attendees. “They were flummoxed, they were confused and they were startled.”

We also know that the reporting of this made Trump very defensive. 

Fake News story of secret dinner with Putin is "sick." All G 20 leaders, and spouses, were invited by the Chancellor of Germany. Press knew!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 19, 2017

Pretty sure it the press knew, WE would have known much sooner.

The Fake News is becoming more and more dishonest! Even a dinner arranged for top 20 leaders in Germany is made to look sinister!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 19, 2017

I am not sure what is "fake news" about this since the White House has confirmed that it did indeed happen.

You know for a meeting that was supposedly no big deal, this seems to have really triggered Orange Hitler. 

Donald Trump defends son, suggests that ANYBODY would have welcomed foreign interference in our elections.

WATCH: Trump's full answer on Don, Jr.: "From a practical standpoint, most people would have taken that meeting." pic.twitter.com/FHa3q11uya

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) July 13, 2017

Courtesy of The Guardian:

Donald Trump has defended his son in public over his meeting with a Russian lawyer last year, telling a press conference in Paris “most people would have taken that meeting” and ignoring questions about whether offers of political assistance from potential agents of foreign governments should be reported to the FBI.

Actually that is NOT true and has not been true for campaigns in the past.

Trump also sort of fogged over the other two people in this meeting, who for the record were his son-in-law/campaign adviser Jared Kushner, and his campaign manager at the time Paul Manafort.

And for both of them this could be a much bigger problem than it might be for Junior.

To be clear what Trump said in this answer is that he finds it perfectly acceptable to allow a foreign agent, from an unfriendly nation, to give you potentially stolen classified information that can be used to harm your opponent's chances of winning the election.

This is a man with literally NO ethics and NO respect for the rule of law.

Nor will he accept that he might have done something wrong or even that the Russia story is legitimate, as he essentially spells out in a recent interview with Reuters: 

"The only frustration is that this Russia story is a hoax made up by the Democrats as an excuse for losing an election that they should have won because it’s almost impossible for a Republican to win the Electoral College.” 

"There was zero coordination. It’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. There’s no coordination, this was a hoax, this was made up by the Democrats." 

"This is the greatest con job in history, where a party sits down the day after they got their ass kicked, and they say, 'Huh, what’s our excuse?'” 

"It just continues and continues, and honestly it’s a disgrace, and it’s very bad for our country. And the Russians must be laughing, because this narrative is so bad for us as a country." 

If the Russians are laughing it because their hand picked president is obfuscating just as they expected him to do in response to the findings by American intelligence agencies. 

Which of course undermines people's faith in those agencies and allows Russia much more leeway in their next attacks on our democracy.

By the way Trump has also announced that he is "open" to inviting Putin to the White House.

Courtesy of NBC News :

President Donald Trump would invite Russian President Vladimir Putin to the White House "at the right time," according to White House-released excerpts of an off-the-record conversation with reporters aboard Air Force One Wednesday night that was later released. 

"I don't think this is the right time," the president said of the hypothetical White House invitation, "but the answer is yes, I would. Look it's very easy for me to say absolutely, I won't. That's the easy thing for me to do, but that's the stupid thing to do. Let's be the smart people not the stupid people."

Yes let's be "the smart people" and invite the guy who just hacked out election to walk right into the White House.

Hell why not?

After all it's not like his spies have no already been there.

Seriously, this guy is not even pretending that he is not working for the Kremlin anymore.

Donald Trump Jr. releases emails leading up to meeting with Russian attorney, because apparently there was not yet enough evidence of collusion. Update!

Here's my statement and the full email chain pic.twitter.com/x050r5n5LQ

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) July 11, 2017

Here is page 4 (which did not post due to space constraints). pic.twitter.com/z1Xi4nr2gq

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) July 11, 2017

Courtesy of Reuters:

Presidential candidate Donald Trump's eldest son eagerly agreed last year to meet a woman he was told was a Russian government lawyer who might have information incriminating Democratic rival Hillary Clinton as part of Russian government support for his father, according to an email chain released on Tuesday. 

The email chain was between Donald Trump Jr., who posted it on Twitter, and Rob Goldstone, a publicist who helped to arrange the June 9, 2016 meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya, who says she is a private lawyer and denies having Kremlin ties. 

The disclosures in the email chain could provide ammunition for U.S. investigators probing whether there was collusion between the Kremlin and Trump’s Republican presidential campaign following a U.S. intelligence conclusion that Moscow sought to hurt Clinton and help Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. 

"The Crown prosecutor of Russia ... offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father," said the June 3, 2016, email to Trump Jr. from publicist Rob Goldstone. 

"This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump," according to the email posted by Trump Jr. on Twitter. 

"If it's what you say I love it especially later in the summer," Trump Jr. partly replied in the exchange, which he said represented the entire chain of his emails about the meeting.

On the top subject line of this first email says quite clearly, "Russia-Clinton-private and confidential."

That alone would have given just about anybody with half a brain pause. But not Junior!

"If it's what you say I love it!"

And by the time he got to the part about the "Crown prosecutor of Russia...to provide Trump campaign with information that would incriminate Hillary," followed quickly by, "This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump -- helped along by Aras and Emin," he should have pushed himself away from the keyboard and called the Trump IT guys to scrub his computer clean of any mention of the emails and have this Goldstone dude removed from his list of addresses.

The fact that he didn't backs up that lawyer's assertion that: 

“It is quite possible that maybe they were longing for such an information. They wanted it so badly that they could only hear the thought that they wanted.”

In other words what are illegal and unethical behaviors if you can possibly get your hands on dirt to use against your enemies?

Okay agreeing to meet with a Russian agent, with the promise of receiving Russian government attained information on your father's political opponent, during a presidential campaign.

Is there any way that this is NOT considered collusion?

Update: Here was a statement released by Donald Trump Jr. after he released these emails:  

To everyone, in order to be totally transparent, I am releasing the entire email chain of my emails with Rob Goldstone about the meeting on June 9, 2016. The first email on June 3, 2016 was from Rob, who was relating a request from Emin, a person I knew from the 2013 Ms. Universe Pageant near Moscow. Emin and his father have a very highly respected company in Moscow. The information they suggested they had about Hillary Clinton I thought was Political Opposition Research. I first wanted to just have a phone call but when that didn't work out, they said the woman would be in New York and asked if I would meet. I decided to take the meeting. The woman, as she has said publicly, was not a government official. And, as we have said, she had no information to provide and wanted to talk about adoption policy and the Magnitsky Act. To put this in context, this occurred before the current Russian fever was in vogue. As Rob Goldstone said just today in the press, the entire meeting was “the most inane nonsense l ever heard. And I was actually agitated by it.”

As crazy as it sounds I really think that Junior thinks this is helping him.

By the way today Sarah Sanders-Huckabee answered questions, off camera of course, and to questions about this meeting and these emails she said they needed to contact Junior's attorney.

I think they might finally have started to realize what a huge deal this is turning out to be.

Before that meeting with the attorney Donald Trump Jr. received an email stating that the information came from the Russian government which was trying to help his dad get elected.

Courtesy of the New York Times: 

Before arranging a meeting with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer he believed would offer him compromising information about Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump Jr. was informed in an email that the material was part of a Russian government effort to aid his father’s candidacy, according to three people with knowledge of the email. 

The email to the younger Mr. Trump was sent by Rob Goldstone, a publicist and former British tabloid reporter who helped broker the June 2016 meeting. In a statement on Sunday, Mr. Trump acknowledged that he was interested in receiving damaging information about Mrs. Clinton, but gave no indication that he thought the lawyer might have been a Kremlin proxy. 

Mr. Goldstone’s message, as described to The New York Times by the three people, indicates that the Russian government was the source of the potentially damaging information. It does not elaborate on the wider effort by Moscow to help the Trump campaign. 

There is no evidence to suggest that the promised damaging information was related to Russian government computer hacking that led to the release of thousands of Democratic National Committee emails. The meeting took place less than a week before it was widely reported that Russian hackers had infiltrated the committee’s servers. 

But the email is likely to be of keen interest to the Justice Department and congressional investigators, who are examining whether any of President Trump’s associates colluded with the Russian government to disrupt last year’s election. American intelligence agencies have determined that the Russian government tried to sway the election in favor of Mr. Trump.

Okay the key phrase here is "before it was widely reported." However it WAS already out there that the DNC was hacked, and in May Crowdstrike had already identified the Russians as the hackers.

Political campaigns are far more focused on this kind of thing than the average American, and that is just setting aside the possibility that the Russians had not already communicated to Trump folks that they had information from those hacks that could help them win.

It was also noted on one of the cable news shows I watched that this meeting seemed to be the catalyst for the hacked information being dumped on the internet.

Only six days later Guccifer 2.0, who has now been identified as a Russian operative, takes credit for the hack and starts dumping internal DNC documents.

And they are followed by Wikileaks which dumps a bunch of hacked DNC info on July 22.

On the 27th Trump senior says this:

“I will tell you this, Russia: If you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Trump said at a news conference. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”

Things then escalated from there.

Of course Trump supporters and Right Wing news outlets are downplaying this as aggressively as possible, with Junior's attorney claiming that it's all much ado about nothing: 

“The meeting lasted about 20-30 minutes, and nothing came of it. His father knew nothing about it. The bottom line is that Don, Jr. did nothing wrong.”

Says the man paid to proclaim his client's innocence despite any evidence to the contrary.

The outside attorneys for Trump Sr. are even trying to suggest that this whole meeting was a Democratic plot.

NEW: spox for POTUS outside legal team casts mtg as part of oppo effort. Source close to team calls it "poss. setup by Russian operatives" pic.twitter.com/1Y145Ooag8

— Hallie Jackson (@HallieJackson) July 9, 2017

I don't even know what to say to that.

The key points here are that Don Jr. KNEW that he was taking this meeting with hopes of receiving damaging information about Hillary Clinton obtained by the Russian government, that was now working to help his father get elected, while there was information circulating out there that the Russians had hacked the DNC.

And he took his father's campaign manager and campaign advisor/son-in-law along for the ride.

And THAT is the clearest evidence of collusion that we have seen thus far.

By the way this is a picture of the guy who set up this meeting on the day after the election.

Rob Goldstone, the Donald Trump Jr. acquaintance who brokered the meeting with a Kremlin-linked lawyer, the day after the 2016 US election: pic.twitter.com/20bMLUvDiH

— Jon Swaine (@jonswaine) July 9, 2017

Take from that what you will.

Donald Trump tweets about meeting with Putin and it is just as bad as you might imagine.

I strongly pressed President Putin twice about Russian meddling in our election. He vehemently denied it. I've already given my opinion.....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 9, 2017

Yes he did, and that opinion was that the Russians "probably" hacked computers during the 2016 election, but that it might have been "other people in other countries" as well.

...We negotiated a ceasefire in parts of Syria which will save lives. Now it is time to move forward in working constructively with Russia!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 9, 2017

Wait, so that's it. He "strongly pressed," Putin denied it, and now it is time to just drop it?

Actually no, it gets worse than that.

Putin & I discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 9, 2017

...and safe. Questions were asked about why the CIA & FBI had to ask the DNC 13 times for their SERVER, and were rejected, still don't....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 9, 2017

...have it. Fake News said 17 intel agencies when actually 4 (had to apologize). Why did Obama do NOTHING when he had info before election?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 9, 2017

Holy shit!

So not only is Trump dismissing the reports from American intelligence agencies about Russian hacking as "fake news," but he is literally inviting the Russians inside our cyber security systems to help them do a better job of hacking the elections the next time around.

(By the way since the DNI signed off on that intelligence report identifying Russia as the hackers, it was technically correct that all 17 agencies agreed on that since the DNI is an umbrella group which represents them, however it is true that only the FBI, CIA, NSA, the Justice Department, and the DNI were directly involved in the investigation.  Really not sure how pointing that out helps explain why Trump is not holding the Russians accountable.)

But wait, there's more.

Sanctions were not discussed at my meeting with President Putin. Nothing will be done until the Ukrainian & Syrian problems are solved!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 9, 2017

Sure, why would Trump talk about sanctions when clearly does not believe there is any reason for them?

Okay well if you still entertained any doubts that Trump was a puppet of Vladimir Putin's I think you can put those doubts to rest. 

Vladimir Putin seems pretty convinced that Trump bought his denials about interference in the 2016 election.

God you have soft hands.

Courtesy of the AP:  

Russian President Vladimir Putin says he thinks U.S. President Donald Trump believed his in-person denials of Russian meddling in the U.S. presidential vote. 

Putin spoke Saturday after the Group of 20 summit where he and Trump had their first face to face meeting. 

He said Trump asked him numerous questions about Russia’s alleged interference in the U.S. election during a lengthy discussion on the issue. 

Putin says he thinks his answers satisfied Trump, but added that Trump’s opinion would be better sought from the U.S. president himself. 

He says Moscow and Washington would be able to improve their ties if the two countries keep relating the way he and Trump did.

Sounds like Labrov's version of events was more accurate than Secretary of State Tillerson's.

Of course we would definitely know what was said if they had not kept the two hour meeting so hush hush. Now it is just a case of liar said vs other liar said.

Well at least the new leader of the free world knows how to respond to Putin's bullshit.

Mansplaining, G20 style. Watch Angela Merkel’s eye-roll. pic.twitter.com/PXEI0WxyYH

— SimonNRicketts (@SimonNRicketts) July 7, 2017

Well done, almost as appropriate as our last true leader's steely eyed glare.

Yes my friends, I am old enough to remember when America stood up to the Russians and did not allow them to set our agenda, choose our leaders, or poach our hard earned position as a dominant world power.

Donald Trump meets Vladimir Putin, and allows himself to be dominated just as anticipated.

So as you can see Trump claimed to be "very honored" to meet with the man who interfered in our presidential election, and may have just hacked into our nuclear power stations.

Essentially showing himself to be Putin's bitch right off the bat.

As for what they discussed about any hacking, the two sides have very different accounts.

Courtesy of Business Insider:  

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Friday that President Donald Trump "pressed" Russian President Vladimir Putin on findings that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election, during what Tillerson described as a "very robust and lengthy exchange on the subject." 

Tillerson said Russian meddling was discussed right at the onset of the pair's first bilateral meeting, at the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany. 

Russia's account of the discussions on the topic was quite different. 

According to Russia's Interfax news agency, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Trump acknowledged that an anti-Russian campaign in the US was "looking odd" and that he accepted Putin's past statements denying Russia had any involvement in the 2016 election. A White House official pushed back, telling NBC News that Lavrov's characterization was "not accurate.

Sort of hard to determine the truth when dealing with two habitual liars, but I have the feeling that Russia is actually providing the more accurate information in this case.

Lavrov: Trump said he heard Putin's statements that Russia didn't hack election and accepts them.

— Lucian Kim (@Lucian_Kim) July 7, 2017

And if it is true that Trump proposed working WITH the Russians on cyber security that is like asking the mice to help you guard the cheese.

For his part Tillerson also had his description of the meeting.

Tillerson: 'The two leaders, I would say, connected very quickly. There was a very clear, positive chemistry between the two." (via @MSNBC) pic.twitter.com/U5otmORBj0

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) July 7, 2017

"Not a lot of re-litigating the past," and "There was very clear, positive chemistry between the two" are not phrases that give me any confidence that Trump stood up to Putin in any way.

Of course before the meeting, instead of preparing, Trump made time to attack the media and oddly enough John Podesta.

I will represent our country well and fight for its interests! Fake News Media will never cover me accurately but who cares! We will #MAGA!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 7, 2017

Everyone here is talking about why John Podesta refused to give the DNC server to the FBI and the CIA. Disgraceful!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 7, 2017

I doubt that "everyone here" even knows who the the hell John Podesta is, though of course Putin might since he hacked his email account.

By the way Podesta was not in charge of the DNC and had NOTHING to do with their server.

Podesta did respond to this after learning about during a drive with his wife.

3/ Get a grip man, the Russians committed a crime when they stole my emails to help get you elected President.

— John Podesta (@johnpodesta) July 7, 2017

So to be clear it appears that Trump did NOTHING to seriously confront Putin for attacking our democracy, yet had plenty of time to attack a man who was one of the victims of that attack.

Donald Trump is preparing for his meeting with Vladimir Putin by reading "tweet length talking points."

I know I've used this image before, but come on it's so perfect.

Courtesy of Vox: 

US intelligence officials are trying to prepare President Trump for his high-stakes meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin Friday by feeding him information the only way they know how: in bite-size 140-character pieces. 

It’s a well-reported fact that Trump doesn’t read his daily briefings and prefers “killer graphics” like pictures, videos, and charts, or in-person briefings. Trump aides have come up with some creative ways to keep the president focused — such as mentioning his name as frequently as possible in memos — but this latest strategy might be their most desperate one yet. 

According to a report from the Los Angeles Times, Trump aides have prepared “a list of tweet-length sentences that summarize the main points Trump could bring up with Putin” in the hopes that the president absorbs even a little of what he needs to know before sitting down with the canny, and sure to be well-prepared, Russian leader.

So we are sending a mental midget into a meeting with a former Soviet spy who was the master mind behind the hacking of our last election.

Perhaps we ought to just douse Trump in steak sauce as well.

What's more apparently Trump is planning to wing it.

Last week, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster said the Trump administration doesn’t have a clear plan for the meeting with Putin. 

“We have no specific agenda,” he said. “It’s whatever the president wants to talk about.”

On the other hand there is no question that Putin will be quite well prepared for this meeting with a list of "suggestions" that Trump can mull over to help build a friendship between Russia and the United States.

And trust that none of those "suggestions" will favor America in any way.

Former spies are convinced that Putin will have little trouble manipulating Trump due to his massive and delicate ego.

The Kremlin has already taken advantage of Trump's refusal to confirm that it was Russia that hacked our last election.

I imagine that Putin is salivating at the prospect of making America's commander-in-chief his bitch for the first time in Russian history.

Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin to hold bilateral meeting during G20 Summit.

Courtesy of CNN: 

President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will sit down for an official bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Hamburg on Friday rather than an informal pull-aside meeting. 

The meeting, confirmed by both the White House and the Kremlin on Tuesday, will be the first in-person meeting between the two leaders and the first official bilateral meeting between a US and Russian president in nearly two years. 

The meeting comes amid ongoing tensions between the two countries stemming from Russia's efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election, its annexation of Ukrainian territory and its support of the Syrian regime. 

"It is planned as a fully-fledged, 'seated' meeting," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday, according to the state-run TASS news agency. 

National Security Council spokesman Michael Anton also confirmed that the two leaders will sit down together Friday for a bilateral meeting. 

The format remained an open question through this weekend. Homeland security adviser Thomas Bossert said Sunday on ABC's "This Week" that the parameters of the meeting had not yet "been set."

There are lots of pundits weighing in on this and suggesting that Trump needs to bring up the Russian interference in the 2016 election or else he will be forever Putin's poodle.

But I am convinced that Trump is already Putin's poodle and that the topic will never come up.

Let's face it Putin would never admit anything, but then again Trump does not want him to admit anything.

Trump is terrified that his election victory will be made illegitimate, and the first step toward doing that would be for Putin to admit that he helped him to win.

It serves neither one to even broach the topic, and so they will talk about other things instead, and don't think that THOSE topics will be in any way controversial either.  

Speaking of Russia, the White House has confirmed that the Trump/Putin meeting is a go.

Courtesy of NBC News:  

President Donald Trump will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin next week at the G20 summit, the White House confirmed Thursday. 

Trump's highly-anticipated first meeting with his Russian counterpart will come on the sidelines of the summit in Hamburg, Germany, National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster told reporters in an off-camera briefing. McMaster, joined by National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn, declined to offer any further details on what might be discussed and dodged questions about whether Russia's interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections would be on the table.

"It's really going to be whatever the president wants to talk about," McMaster said. Cohn added the agenda is still being set up and finalized.

Well of course we are not going to be privy to the adoration that Trump will pour into the ear of the man who helped steal the presidency for him.

You know, when he is not serving as Putin's c*ck holster that is.

I wonder if Putin will show pleasure at what his padawan has accomplished in destroying the integrity of America, or if he will feel the need to punish him for failing to remove the sanctions as promised?

Either way I am sure that Trump is looking forward to it.

Donald Trump very excited for his first meeting with his Russian puppet master in Germany, his handlers much less so.

Courtesy of TPM: 

President Donald Trump is eager to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin with full diplomatic bells and whistles when the two are in Germany for a multinational summit next month. But the idea is exposing deep divisions within the administration on the best way to approach Moscow in the midst of an ongoing investigation into Russian meddling in the U.S. elections. 

Many administration officials believe the U.S. needs to maintain its distance from Russia at such a sensitive time — and interact only with great caution. 

But Trump and some others within his administration have been pressing for a full bilateral meeting. He’s calling for media access and all the typical protocol associated with such sessions, even as officials within the State Department and National Security Council urge more restraint, according to a current and a former administration official.

You know one would expect that a person under investigation for possibly colluding with the Russians to hijack an election, would avoid the leader of Russia like the plague, if for no other reason than simply the optics of such a meeting.

But Donald Trump's arrogance and ego simply will not allow him to recognize that this could backfire on him and only add fuel to the ongoing investigations.

Or...it could simply be that Trump is being summoned by his master who wants to demonstrate his dominance over the president of the United States, and Trump is simply too weak and compromised to resist.