Conservatives Confident Trump Is No Longer Lying About Russia - Jonathan Chait

[DonViejo]

July 12, 2017
11:18 am

As evidence of collusion between Russia and Trump’s campaign has piled up, the line of defense has retreated. Maybe Donald Trump. Jr. is a wide-eyed kid who made some bad choices, the administration’s allies concede, but his now-undeniable desire to collude with Russia never materialized. “When the meeting happened on June 9, no anti-Hillary information was forthcoming. Veselnitskaya only wanted to discuss a sanctions law called the Magnitsky Act, and claims she never had any damaging or sensitive information about Hillary Clinton,” argues James Robbins in USA Today. Byron York (“Trump-Russia investigation takes sharp turn toward the dumb”) and The Wall Street Journal editorial page (“Keystone Kops Collusion”), among others, offer up the comedy-of-errors fallback.

Before delving into these rationalizations, it is worth reviewing just how much ground has already been surrendered. A week after the Russian collusion meeting in Trump Tower, Trump publicly accused the Democrats of faking the hack of its own emails. (Trump: “We believe it was the DNC that did the ‘hacking’ as a way to distract from the many issues facing their deeply flawed candidate and failed party leader.”) Trump denied that Russia interfered in the election at all (“I think maybe the Democrats are putting that out,” he said on RT last September. “Who knows, but I think it’s pretty unlikely.”) Trump has denied throughout that Russia was behind the email hacks.

Trump and his advisers and spokespeople have repeatedly made false denials of any contact with Russia. When reports first surfaced of the June 9 meeting, Donald Trump Jr. gave a series of evasive accounts — first portraying it as an adoption meeting — until an email finally surfaced destroying any doubt that he took it with the intent of colluding on the campaign.

'There was no hacking, Russia didn’t do the hacking, we didn’t meet with any Russians, when we met with the Russians we didn’t discuss hacking.' The position of Trump’s conservative apologists is that this time they are probably telling the truth. It’s the law of averages. It’s like a coin came up heads 99 times in a row — the next one just has to be tails, right?

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http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/conservatives-confident-trump-no-longer-lying-about-russia.html

[Eugene]

1. Must keep hope alive.

Others have pointed out that, after a witness is caught twice telling a lie, the third version of his story may still not be the truth.

[DonViejo]

4. The NYT reporter covering the Russia and Jr story...

told Rachel Maddow last night "there's more to come." Someone posted a tweet from the same journalist , again last night, reading "I'm still working on the story" or, words to that effect

[Kaleva]

2. The law of averages

If a coin lands heads up 99 times in a row, it's still a 50-50 chance it will land heads up on the 100th toss.

[central scrutinizer]

5. Assuming a fair coin, yes

But when a coin lands heads 99 times in a row, there is a probability of almost zero that it is a fair coin. So it will almost certainly land heads again. In this setting, the crime family has lied 99 times, so it is likely the next statement will also be a lie.

[Kaleva]

7. The way I look at it,.....

If the Trumps lie 99 times in a row, the odds that the next thing they say will be a lie will be just as good as the 1st time they said something.

[central scrutinizer]

8. That's my point

Just phrased differently

[BootinUp]

9. Makes sense to me. Nt

[SharonClark]

3. Trump stop lying? No evidence of that.

[Fresh_Start]

6. only way to be confident Trump is no longer lying...is after he is dead

then he can't lie...but I wouldn't put anything passed the rest of his mob

[PJMcK]

10. From the end of the article

This is an excellent observation:

"At every stage, the Journal and other Trump apologists have leaned heavily on the uncertainty of the facts not yet revealed, while disregarding the importance of every previous defense that has been disproven. Now faced with evidence more damning than anybody could have imagined — a promise of Russian interference on Trump’s behalf, in writing! — the Journal is treating the clarity of the evidence as more reason to give Trump the benefit of the doubt. But maybe, just maybe, there’s a reason for all these lies."

[MiniMe]

11. It doesn't matter that they got nothing out of the meeting, Jr was hoping that there was something

He went to the meeting thinking he would get something from a foreign government and was disappointed that he didn't get anything. It is all about intent