The two things attracting the most attention are: 1) Wikileaks telling Jr. to check out a PAC-run anti-Trump site. Don Jr. said he'd ask around. But checking out an opposing PAC is normal, and there's no evidence the campaign did anything illicit to check them out. 2/x
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Also attracting attention: 2) Wikileaks told Don Jr. to check out something they published. 15 minutes later, Trump Sr. tweeted about it. But that material was already published. There's no indication they discussed it beforehand, or coordinated the timing of its release. 3/x
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Websites and other media organizations (across the whole spectrum) contact campaigns all the time, trying to draw attention to their published material. And campaigns highlight publicly available information that fits their narrative. That's not unusual. 4/x
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Compare this to Don Jr.'s emails setting up a meeting in Trump tower with people he believed to be representatives of the Russian government in possession of secret material. As I wrote about in this article, that was a big deal. 5/xhttps://arcdigital.media/thanks-to-donald-trump-jr-im-no-longer-a-trump-russia-skeptic-a34443eaba8b …
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And compare Jr.-Wikileaks DMs to the Papadopoulos emails. As I discussed in this article, Papadopoulos set up secret meetings with Russian government representatives, and discussed it with (and said he had approval from) top Trump campaign officials. https://arcdigital.media/americas-on-a-collision-course-with-a-constitutional-crisis-7b732a35c6fc … 6/x
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Don Jr. and Papadopoulos' emails setting up meetings with Russian government representatives look like coordination. Back-and-forth. Admitted Russian gov. Approval from senior people. The Don Jr.-Wikileaks correspondence doesn't have that. 7/x
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The Trump team lied about this. But they lie about so many things, both innocuous and incriminating. Them lying, on its own, doesn't prove anything. 8/x
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Objectivity, evidence-based reasoning, and Truth are under assault. Insinuation, motivated reasoning, and conspiracy theorizing contribute to that assault, no matter what cause they serve Others doing it isn't an excuse. It's even more reason to objectively follow the facts (END)
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Seems you’re trusting that the exchanges posted by Trump Jr are complete and not missing any deleted DMs or other forms of comms. Not sure about that leap of faith.
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I'm going off the available evidence. It would be a mistake to assume there's nothing else and a mistake to assume there's additional DMs which are more incriminating.
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You're going off of an "interpretation" of the exchange that hand-waves the fact that direct action was requested by a hostile foreign actor (Wikileaks) and was provided by the candidate, when Trump tweeted out 15 minutes later.
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No, that's in tweet #3. "Hey, check out this public information" isn't illicit. "Psst, we'd like to secretly provide you with some stolen information" is. In this specific case, it's the former.
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Coordinating the campaign's actions with a hostile foreign actor isn't something to just be hand-waved away, whatever you may think. And that's what those DMs prove Trump did. It's not about the type of INFORMATION, it's about the ACTIONS the campaign took in coordinating w/WL.
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I'm sad to say, the Trump campaign and presidency proves that's not true. For example, lying about inauguration crowd size. Didn't so anything wrong, but lied about it anyway.
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This was not a harmless lie. This was effectively greasing the pan. Getting folks primed for bigger lies to come. Sorry but you and I disagree. The essence of gaslighting.
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I didn't say anything about harm/harmless. I noted that lying about any contact doesn't make the revealed correspondence say something it doesn't actually say.
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Ahh, my misunderstanding on your tweet about crowd size. On WikiLeaks tho, there does seem to be some mutual exchange of favors (limited by my reading) there given Trump Sr tweet timeline and Jr looking into things as the DM stated.
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Agree. But anyone with even a 2-cent brain notifies the FBI.
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About Russia's offer to provide secret information, definitely. I'm not as sure about this one.
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