March 3, 2019

Trump falsely denies 2016 phone calls between his team and Russia

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/trump-falsely-denies-2016-phone-calls-between-his-team-and-russia?fbclid=IwAR2V58jIX0XnCjvP5Z833oAHLT2NP22b2byEBrw8b6FFjLHy6FNXHG4sHh8
"Trump and his team initially insisted that there no communications whatsoever between the Republican campaign and Russian operatives during the 2016 campaign. Confronted with evidence to the contrary, Trump and his closest associates, at least for a while, continued to insist that the interactions simply never occurred. As regular readers may recall, there were plenty of denials, all of which have been proven false: * At a pre-inaugural press conference, Donald Trump himself said no one from his team was in contact with Russians during the campaign. * Asked if anyone with Trump’s political operation had any contact with Russians during the election, Vice President Mike Pence said, “Of course not.” It wasn’t Pence’s only bogus denial on this. * Kellyanne Conway, asked about the possibility of communications between the Republican campaign and Russians, said, “Absolutely not.” She added the conversations “never happened” and any suggestions to the contrary “undermine our democracy.” * On the same issue, Hope Hicks said, “There was no communication between the campaign and any foreign entity during the campaign.” * Sarah Huckabee Sanders added, “This is a non-story because, to the best of our knowledge, no contacts took place.” * Reince Priebus said last year, “Of course, we didn’t interface with the Russians.” What’s more, as regular readers may recall, there’s ample reason to believe various officials in the Trump campaign knew about the Russian contacts, even while the president and his team denied that the communications were happening. And yet there was the president on Friday, 28 months after the election, still making the case that there were “no phone calls, no nothing.” Does Trump not realize that we already know this isn’t true?"