All the president's yes men
All the president’s yes men
Trump's most credible messengers are being accurate. But they're not being honest.
Updated by Dara Linddara@vox.com May 16, 2017, 2:00pm EDT
If it’s possible to work for Donald Trump and still remain an honest person, we haven’t seen evidence of it yet.
Time and again, even the most serious and respected people in the Trump administration — people who were looked to as good influences on the ignorant and impulsive president, or, in a worst-case scenario, as canaries in the coal mine — have ended up going out to defend Trump over something indefensible. They may not be technically lying, but they are advancing Trump’s narrative instead of advancing the truth. And more often than not, Trump has repaid them by making them look like fools — admitting he committed whatever sin they’ve helped to cover up.
Take National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, who was trotted out to the press Monday night to push back against reports that Trump had divulged super-classified information to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador during a meeting last week (and possibly put a key anti-ISIS source in danger by doing so).
McMaster’s carefully worded non-denial denial all but went up in smoke by Tuesday morning, when Trump tweeted that he’d had very good reasons to give information to the Russians. By the time McMaster delivered a second press briefing Tuesday, he was affirmatively defending Trump’s decision to share information as “wholly appropriate” — and chiding the press for the “leaks” he’d earlier tried to discredit.
Something similar played out last week, when Trump fired FBI Director James Comey. That time it was Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein — whose memo to Attorney General Jeff Sessions was originally presented as the reason for firing Comey — and Vice President Mike Pence, who spent a lot of time last Wednesday pointing to Rosenstein’s “recommendation” when asked about the firing. By Thursday, Trump had told NBC’s Lester Holt that he’d already decided to fire Comey no matter what Rosenstein’s memo said.
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https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/5/16/15646836/mcmaster-trump-russia-lie
