I have to go to practice but it’s amazing how the goal posts have moved.
https://themoscowproject.org/dispatch/tr...stigation/
Ryan Lizza recently had an important piece about the Trump administration’s “Boil the Frog” strategy regarding the Russia investigation: a preference that information be released slowly and confusingly rather than have it all come out at once, in order to “soften the blow.” One advantage of this slow drip of revelations is that it makes it easier for the Trump administration to shift the goal posts for the investigations. Lizza explains the shifting goal post tactic with regard to contacts with Wikileaks:
“After Pence’s comment, several Trump officials issued their own blanket denials of any contacts with foreign entities during the campaign. As all of these general denials have collapsed, the White House has retreated to making more tailored denials. First, there was no contact at all. When numerous contacts were revealed, the White House shifted to arguing there was no coordination (or “collusion”). Now that clear coordination between WikiLeaks and the Trump campaign has been uncovered, the new line is that it wasn’t illegal. Trump and his Republican allies are betting that each disclosure, on its own, can seem innocuous or defensible, as the public becomes confused by the complicated timeline and tedious details. The Trump camp’s original broad denials start to be forgotten, and the bar for what is considered truly inappropriate coordination gets higher.”
But it’s not just contact with Wikileaks. Below are three other goal posts that the White House has clearly moved.
Shifting goal post #1: The existence, degree, and importance of the Trump camp’s contacts with Russia.
First: There were no contacts between the Trump Campaign and Russia.
Hope Hicks stated in December 2016 that the Trump campaign was “not aware of any campaign representatives that were in touch with any foreign agents […] it never happened. There was no communication between the campaign and any foreign entity during the campaign.”
When asked about any contact between the Trump campaign and Russians in December 2016, Kellyanne Conway said that “those conversations never happened […] that is just not only inaccurate and false, but it’s dangerous.”
At his January 2017 confirmation hearing, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said he “did not have communications with the Russians.”
When asked about contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia in January 2017, Vice President Pence replied “of course not.”
Then: There may have been with Russia, but they weren’t about the campaign.
When Sessions’ previous statement regarding contacts between the campaign and foreign entities was disproven, he said there were no communications about “issues of the campaign.” When this was disproven, he said there were no communications “concerning any type of interference with any campaign or election in the United States.”
As more information about more meetings between Sessions and the Russian ambassador came out, Sessions said that the meeting wasn’t important, because he met with many ambassadors in his capacity as an advisor on the Trump campaign.
Donald Trump Jr. said that while he may have met with Russians, none of the meetings involved him “representing the campaign in any way, shape or form.”
When news of the June 9 meeting broke, Donald Trump, Jr., released a statement insisting that the meeting had nothing to do with the campaign.
Carter Page has claimed that his July 2016 trip to Russia was “’totally unrelated’ to the campaign.”
Third: Contact with Russia didn’t matter because it didn’t yield any useful information.
When The New York Times published Donald Trump Jr.’s emails and his previous story fell apart, he insisted that the meeting didn’t matter, because it was just one of many meetings that he took as a representative of the campaign, and anyway, he didn’t receive any useful information and didn’t follow up with Veselnitskaya about learning more.
Lately: There was substantive contact, but not from the right people on the campaign for it to matter.
After George Papadopoulos’s plea deal was unsealed, the White House attempted to downplay the revelations by repeatedly claiming that he was too minor of an advisor for his meetings to have been important—only for news to come out that he was in continual contact with important campaign figures like Corey Lewandowski, Paul Manafort, and Stephen Miller.
After Carter Page came under scrutiny for his many contacts with Russian operatives throughout the campaign, as well as his July 2016 visit to Moscow, Corey Lewandowski refers to him as “a low-level volunteer” on the campaign.
Trump also tried to distance himself from Manafort even before he was indicted on multiple charges, saying that Manafort was only on the campaign for “a very short period of time.” Sarah Huckabee Sanders later claims the indictment has “nothing to do with the president’s campaign or campaign activity.”
Shifting goal post #2: Whether Russia interfered in the election in the first place.
First: The CIA is incompetent. After a secret CIA assessment concluded that Russia specifically sought to help Trump win, the transition team released a statement casting doubt on the findings, saying, “These were the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.”
Then: President Obama should have acted. As evidence of Russia’s role in the election mounted, Trump accused President Obama of collusion for failing to act on the CIA’s assessment that Russia was attempting to interfere in the election.
Third: Interference didn’t impact the election. Later, CIA Director Mike Pompeo falsely claimed that the CIA concluded that Russian interference didn’t affect the outcome of the election – causing the CIA to issue a statement correcting its own Director’s remarks – and is running down conspiracy theories trying to shift the blame from Russia to the Democratic Party. Pompeo has since come out in support of the intelligence community’s findings.
Now: It was actually Hillary Clinton who colluded with Russia. The claims are now little more than conspiracy theories; the latest claim is that it was Hillary Clinton who colluded with Russia – not Donald Trump. The White House Press Secretary has said, “There’s clear evidence of the Clinton campaign colluding with Russian intelligence to spread disinformation and smear the President to influence the election.”
Shifting goal post #3: The impact of Russia’s social media influence campaign.
First: Spending is too small. At first, the official line was to dismiss the talk about social media ads, insisting that Russia’s social-media spending was too small to be meaningful.
Second: Americans weren’t influenced by political ads. As tech companies and journalists have dug deeper and exposed the scope of Russia’s influence, the administration’s line shifted, with Deputy Attorney General (and Trump appointee) Rod Rosenstein questioning not whether there were enough ads to impact the election but whether Americans would fall for the ads.
Despite the Trump team’s increasingly desperate attempts to move the goal posts to stay ahead of the growing mountain of evidence, the central questions remain the same: Did the Trump campaign aid, encourage, or support Russian interference in the 2016 election?
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Trump tells Session’s to end Mueller probe immediately.
