Trump Walking Back, But Tripping Over His Toes While He Does It

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Apparently we have no audio or video, but President Trump is now saying that he totally accepts the conclusions of our intelligence community that Russia interfered with our election. Of course he refused to say that yesterday when he was standing right next to Vladimir Putin. The CNN consensus is that Trump is trying to “walk back” what he said, but that, really, he’s not walking back anything. “It’s not enough,” says Gloria Borger. “There’s no cleaning up this mess.”

Blah blah blah. I’m not sure how we’re getting this information. Is someone using Morse code from within the closed meeting with the press and congressional leaders in the White House? Smoke signals?

Let’s switch to Fox. Ari Fleischer just said that Trump made a mistake, but Democrats have totally overreacted. Brett Baier hesitated, but then managed to say about today’s statement, “That doesn’t cut it, really.” Plus, what about all the great stuff Trump has done? You know, like getting NATO to increase its budget, which is actually something Obama did. Or provide weapons to Ukranians in the east. Which is actually … totally legit. How about that? There actually is one thing Trump has done in opposition to Putin.

Anyway, this is a total clusterfuck. There’s no way for Trump to put lipstick on this pig, but there’s also no way to pretend he didn’t prostrate himself in front of Putin.

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PLEASE—BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things it doesn’t like—which is most things that are true.

We’ll say it loud and clear: At Mother Jones, no one gets to tell us what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please do your part and help us reach our $150,000 membership goal by May 31.

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