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Monday Night Jam: Forq, "Taizo"

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makeitstop7/11/2017 10:54:00 am PDT

Heh, indeedy.

Donald Trump Jr. is just Staggeringly Incompetent.

There is much to be shocked by in the revelation that Donald Trump Jr. was offered incriminating information about Hillary Clinton as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” There’s the fact that the president’s son accepted the offer. There’s the fact that he offered advice on when the information should be released for maximal political impact (“especially later in the summer”). There’s the fact that he took a meeting with someone described to him as a “Russian government lawyer” to discuss the information.

And then there’s the fact that did all this in an email chain, a chain that could be and was retrieved and released for the public and prosecutors to see.

What Trump Jr. did was morally wrong — there’s little doubt about that. What you do when foreign governments offer you assistance in an election is call the FBI, just like the Gore campaign did in 2000 when they were mysteriously sent video of George W. Bush’s debate practice.

But Trump Jr.’s behavior was not just wrong. It was staggeringly, astonishingly incompetent. He didn’t just engage in a conspiracy to enlist a foreign government to help win an election, he left written records proving that was what he had done.

Beyond the criminal and moral issues at stake, this incident should make us doubt the basic competence of the people the president has chosen to advise him and help run the country.