Ever since Donald Trump won the presidential election in 2016, he and others regularly told people they never had any contact with Russians during the campaign. They didn’t offer nondenial denials. They were emphatic. “There were no meetings with Russians during the campaign.”
We now know this is a lie.
Donald Trump Jr. accepted a meeting with a Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, and invited Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner to attend.
At this point, the motivation of Veselnitskaya doesn’t matter at all, nor does it matter who she was working with or that the meeting provided nothing of value to the Trump campaign. Even if you believe the conspiracy theory that Veselnitskaya was a Democratic plant used as a means of setting up the Trump campaign for trouble, it still does not matter.
In January, “Face The Nation” host John Dickerson asked Mike Pence, “Did any Trump campaign member have contact with the Russians?” Pence answered, “Absolutely not.”
The reaction by congressional Republicans to the revelation of the meeting set up by Donald Trump Jr. has been muted to say the least. Many Trump defenders and even some in conservative media argue since Trump Jr. received nothing of value from the meeting, it doesn’t matter that it took place.
Unfortunately, it fits a pattern of behavior by the Trump administration since January to obfuscate, contradict itself, and flat out lie with little to no regard to what effect it has on the White House’s ability to run the country. A Marist poll in late June showed 60 percent of the country had little to no trust in the administration. An ABC/Washington Post poll found 72 percent said they believed “just some” of what Trump said about Russian interference in the 2016 election (22 percent) to “not at all” (50 percent).
As it stands, thanks to Republican support, President Trump’s poll numbers have not completely collapsed. Gallup’s latest daily tracking poll number shows job approval for Trump by Democrats at 8 percent and by independents at 35 percent. Republican support for Trump is solid, at 85 percent.
Sooner or later, however, more Republicans will start to wonder about their decision to back Trump if there are more revelations such as those with Donald Trump Jr.
If they lied about that meeting with a Russian citizen, what other contact took place? People can argue all they want that such meetings do not make a case for “collusion,” but it certainly does not help. Charles Krauthammer, a Trump critic, for months argued the Democrats were making claims of collusion with no evidence. Now he says, it is different:
“I defended them, because up until today there was no ‘there’ there,” he said.
“Well, now there is a ‘there.'”
“The denial of collusion is very weak right now because it looks as if Don Jr. was receptive to receiving this information,” he concluded.
Krauthammer is right. It raises the question of whether or not any other revelations such as this one are forthcoming. If so, Trump might start to see that base of support within the Republican Party begin to collapse, and if so, he’s in big trouble.
They only have themselves to blame because recently, it’s hard to believe anything they say.
Jay Caruso (@JayCaruso) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is the assistant managing editor at RedState, as well as a contributor to National Review and The Atlantic.
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