During today's White House press briefing, Sarah Huckabee Sanders admitted that the president did contribute to Don Jr's statement to the press about meeting with Russian operatives.
Her words entirely refute Jay Sekulow's version of what happened.
To recap: For weeks now the Trump administration and his lawyers have told the press that the president didn't know about Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort and Don Jr's meeting with Russian operatives during the 2016 campaign and had no hand in crafting Don Jr's first press response that claimed he was there to only discuss Russian adoptions.
As I wrote earlier Jay Sekulow went on a press tour to debunk all reports that Trump was involved in his son's response to the email that said Russians had sensitive information about the Clinton campaign to share with him by repeatedly saying, "The president wasn't involved in that."
The Washington Post broke that defense wide open yesterday by reporting: Trump dictated son’s misleading statement on meeting with Russian lawyer.
Today a reporter asked Sanders, "Sarah, according to "the Washington Post," the president tried to change the narrative of what went down in the meeting with the Russian lawyer. Can you address that and tell us, did the president really try to do that?"
Sanders replied, "The statement that Don Junior issued is true. There's no inaccuracy in the statement. The president weighed in as any father would based on the limited information that he had."
What limited information did he have? Are they asking us to believe that Don lied to his father or that Trump was so unawares that he didn't bother to ask what his whole meeting was about?
Huckabee Sanders had a vast array of talking points to try and beat back another horrendous PR day for the president. She blamed the Democrats for using Russia as a PR stunt and the meeting with Kusher, Manafort and Junior was of no consequence.
"America first not Russia first."
John Roberts asked, "Can you clarify the degree to which the president weighed in?"
Sanders said, "He certainly didn't dictate, but you know, he, like I said, he weighed in, offered suggestion, like any father would do."
Bill Kristol nails what Jay Sekulow is feeling right about now.
