George Stephanopoulos asked Kellyanne Conway about the Trump Jr. meeting. She talked about ObamaCare, Benghazi, and Michigan.
President Trump was merely acting as a good father when he responded to news that Donald Trump Jr. met with a Kremlin-linked Russian lawyer during the 2016 election, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway argued Sunday in an interview with ABC host George Stephanopoulos. "The president weighed in as a father. He did not dictate the statement," she claimed.
On Monday, The Washington Post reported the president did in fact dictate the misleading statement, contrary to his lawyer's initial claim of Trump's total uninvolvement. "Flying home from Germany on July 8 aboard Air Force One, Trump personally dictated a statement in which Trump Jr. said that he and the Russian lawyer had 'primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children' when they met in June 2016," the Post story said, citing "multiple people with knowledge of the deliberations."
Stephanopoulos continued to press the question of why the Trump team's narratives varied, but Conway responded by turning to topics including ObamaCare, Benghazi, and campaigning in Michigan. "There's nothing. There's nonsense. It was a ridiculous meeting," she said. "It was nothing. People want to offer their services and have meetings all of the time, believe me. I know you know this. But let's look at the consequence: no follow-up. No results."
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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