Donald Trump confessed to a reporter that he knew about Trump Jr.’s Russia meeting. Now his White House says it was off the record.
Donald Trump has confessed that he knew about his son Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with a Russian government representative. Moreover, Donald Trump confessed this to a reporter during a press conference on Air Force One yesterday. But now his White House is insisting that the response was off the record, leaving the media in a quandary as to whether or not to report Trump’s confession. But we have documentation of that confession right here.
The chaos began when New York Times reporter Julie Davis tweeted the following on Thursday afternoon: “Among pts WH omitted, per pool: Trump said of Jr mtg ‘In fact maybe it was mentioned at some point’ but he wasn’t told it was abt HRC & dirt” (link). Here’s a screen capture in case she ends up deleting it:
This is, in no uncertain terms, Donald Trump confessing that he knew about his son’s meeting with the Russian government attorney – while hedging by insisting that he didn’t know what the meeting was about. It also means Trump is admitting that he lied earlier this week when he insisted that he just learned of the meeting. This raises the question of why the White House omitted Trump’s confession from the pool report that it issued to reporters today who had not been present for the press conference.
We’ve reviewed the tweets and statements of numerous other reporters who were involved in the press conference with Donald Trump, and here’s what we have concluded took place. Donald Trump believed that his press conference with reporters was on the record. His White House either believed in advance, or decided after the fact, that the entire press conference was off the record. The next day, the White House issued a pool report which included Trump’s non-embarrassing answers, while excluding his worst answers and invoking the excuse that the entire thing had supposedly been off the record to begin with. Where does this leave us? Either way, Donald Trump just confessed to knowing about his son’s meeting.
