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President Trump Changed His Story on Son's Meeting with Russian Lawyer

posted by martyb on Tuesday August 07 2018, @05:08PM   
from the "A-Tale-of-Flodden-Field" dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

5News reports:

President Donald Trump appears to have changed his story about a 2016 meeting at Trump Tower that is pivotal to the special counsel's investigation, tweeting that his son met with a Kremlin-connected lawyer to collect information about his political opponent.

[...] That is a far different explanation than Trump gave 13 months ago, when a statement dictated by the president but released under the name of Donald Trump Jr., read: "We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago."

also at Vox, MSN and Mic

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Original Submission

• Re:Untrustable (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday August 16 2018, @12:35PM

  by khallow (3766) on Thursday August 16 2018, @12:35PM (#722145) Journal

  To continue on the subject, here's what PolitiFact had to say [politifact.com] on the matter:

  But what really set everyone off was when Obama tried to rewrite his slogan, telling political supporters on Nov. 4, "Now, if you have or had one of these plans before the Affordable Care Act came into law, and you really liked that plan, what we said was you can keep it if it hasn’t changed since the law passed."
  
  Pants on Fire! PolitiFact counted 37 times when he’d included no caveats, such as a high-profile speech to the American Medical Association in 2009: "If you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what."

  That was over a several year period. Let us also keep in mind that it wasn't a mystery that such changes in health care plans would have come, just due to the large changes in the cost of such health insurance. Changes and dropping health care plans would be a typical and easily foreseeable consequence of law that raises the price and liabilities of health insurance.
  
  And Obama didn't throw this out on Twitter one dark night, but repeatedly made the claim over several years in many public speeches. Then when the original statement became untenable to continue, claimed he didn't really mean it. As to the tweet(s), I think SN commenter, theluggage has a sound take [soylentnews.org] on the value of Twitter speech:

  Ah, Twitter - all those stupid things human beings say when they're drunk, stoned, upset, lonely or just plain bored - once forgotten by the morning after, now recorded, preserved for posterity, made available to all and mistaken by journalists as a source of news.

  [...]

  What's really frightening is the degree of seriousness that some people apply to tweets (buying/selling shares, voting for orange people, etc.)

  Finally, if you're having trouble with people quoting PolitiFact in order to defend the Orange One, perhaps you could instead acknowledge the truth of the observation and continue with your own, namely that a certain other US president has obtained Lie of the Year status for the last three years (and probably will have a lock on the thing for the rest of his tenure as president). But I suppose debate requires thinking and that's hard for you, right?

  Parent