May 27, 2018

Trump Tweets About “Young and Beautiful Lives” Destroyed by Russia Investigation

Poor George.

AP Photo/Mike Stewart

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While outrage spreads about reports of immigrant children who the government placed with traffickers and then lost by the hundreds, Donald Trump is spending his Sunday morning decrying the treatment of another group of young people: those whose lives have been “devastated and destroyed” by the Russia investigation.

“Who’s going to give back the young and beautiful lives (and others) that have been devastated and destroyed by the phony Russia Collusion Witch Hunt?” Trump tweeted Sunday morning. “They journeyed down to Washington, D.C., with stars in their eyes and wanting to help our nation…They went back home in tatters!”

Trump seems to be referring to young upstarts like George Papadopolous, the 30-year-old advisor to his presidential campaign who tried to set up a back channel between the campaign and the Kremlin in 2016, then pled guilty to lying about it to the FBI. Or maybe he’s talking about Hope Hicks, the 29-year-old former White House communications director who resigned a day after telling a House Intelligence Committee that she had occasionally been asked to tell “white lies” on behalf of the Trump administration. 

It’s not the first time Trump has tried to blame the Russian investigation for the sad state of the country’s affairs. In February, he tweeted that the FBI is “spending too much time trying to prove Russian collusion with the Trump campaign.”

The think-about-the-children line of defense is especially galling, but what else is the president supposed to do on a Sunday morning? It’s not like he’s busy.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

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