After a particularly harsh day of constant Russia Trump bombs being dropped on Thursday, President Trump decided that we should investigate Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer, even though the Russians didn’t help Democrats win/steal the 2016 election.
The Russians did in fact help Republican Donald Trump win/steal the 2016 election.
“We should start an immediate investigation into @SenSchumer and his ties to Russia and Putin. A total hypocrite!” Trump whined on Twitter, whilst sharing a picture of Schumer and Putin each eating a doughnut, which is almost like stealing an election but not.
We should start an immediate investigation into @SenSchumer and his ties to Russia and Putin. A total hypocrite! pic.twitter.com/Ik3yqjHzsA
To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 3, 2017
Thursday the Trump AG Jeff Sessions lying to the Senate about his contacts with Russia scandal hit the fan, which followed the Flynn fired for lying about contacts with Russia scandal. The Russia scandal drops were topped off with the news that Trump’s son-in-law had actually met with the Russian Ambassador during the campaign at Trump Tower, during a Flynn meeting. The White House lied about that until they couldn’t anymore.
So that’s a lot of Trump insiders who have ties to Russia: Flynn, Sessions, Donald Trump Jr., Stone, Kushner, Ross, Tillerson, Page, and Manafort.
See, the problem here is it’s not one rogue adviser. It’s all of the close advisers. And all along, Trump has first lied about the meetings and then claimed he had no knowledge even when it’s documented that his White House was told about the Flynn meetings. And then while lying about those meetings, they somehow neglected to mention that OH, BY THE WAY, that Russian Ambassador came to our house too and my son-in-law met with him.
The drip drip of admissions come only after the carefully planned drip drip of intelligence community drops.
Republicans, including Trump, are incorrectly blaming “Democrats” and Obama for “pushing” the Russia information, which suggests that Republicans think only Democrats care about this country’s sovereignty and national security. This is patently untrue, as many in the intelligence community and military community are not Democrats and yet are exceptionally concerned, one might say panicked at times, over the Trump Russia connections.
So to counter that, Republicans are desperately hawking the narrative that Democrats have a Russia problem. They tried to get “Democrat Party Ties to Russia” trending on Twitter Friday (complete with the grammar error tell, so crafty).
This narrative is of course irrelevant, because the issue isn’t having contact with Russians, the issue is having contact with Russians that was and is being lied about and covered up, that took place during an election in which the Russians were known to be helping the Trump campaign win.
Clearly the Russians did not help Chuck Schumer win, they did not help Hillary Clinton, in fact they hacked the Democrats after they couldn’t get into Hillary Clinton’s emails. (This little fact is sort of the bitter cherry on top of the Republican email hysteria, given that Governor Pence used a private email server and was hacked.)
See, it’s not the contact. It’s the quid pro quo, it’s the deception, it’s the working with a hostile foreign aggressor to advance your own power, it’s the turning over all of our intel to the Russians, it’s the President being compromised — these are the issues.
Or, as President Trump would say, “Neener neener! Wah!”
Update: Senator Chuck Schumer’s response:
Happily talk re: my contact w Mr. Putin & his associates, took place in '03 in full view of press & public under oath. Would you &your team? https://t.co/yXgw3U8tmQ
— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) March 3, 2017
Listen to Sarah on the PoliticusUSA Pod on The Daily newsletter podcast here.
Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Connect with Sarah on Post, Mastodon @PoliticusSarah@Journa.Host, & Twitter.