As Air Force One flew home from Europe, news was set to break about a meeting that Donald Trump’s eldest son had with a Kremlin-connected lawyer, promising yet another round of unwelcome headlines about the president and Russia. And that happened twice within a week, reports the Associated press.
The day-after-day drip-drip-drip of revelations over the past week about Donald Trump Jr’s contact with the Russian lawyer in 2016 underscores the White House’s inability to shake off the Russia story and close the book on a narrative that casts a shadow over Trump’s presidency. No matter how presidential Trump may have looked on his back-to-back trips to Europe in recent days, the persistent questions about connections between Trump’s team and Russia prevent him from savoring a public relations victory and building momentum for his stalled legislative agenda.
Trump Jr’s account of his Trump Tower meeting has seemingly changed on an almost daily basis. At first, the meeting was said to be about a Russian adoption program. Then, it was to hear information about campaign rival Hillary Clinton. Finally, Trump Jr was forced to release emails - mere moments before The New York Times planned to do so - that revealed he had told an associate that he would “love” Russia’s help in obtaining negative details about the Democratic nominee.
Even the number of people who attended the meeting has changed. On Friday, a prominent Russian-American lobbyist said that he, too, had been part of the discussion.
Each revelation, no matter how small, has been seized upon by Democrats and dissected in detail on cable news.Chaos in White HouseThe firestorm over Don Jr’s emails has been a frustrating distraction during a stretch in which some White House advisers believed they were finding their footing. Trump’s allies also were heartened by his trips to Europe, believing that his speech saluting national pride in Poland was a high point of his presidency and that he appeared statesman-like during a whirlwind visit to Paris.
But behind the scenes, a group of Trump aides gathered in a cabin on the presidential aircraft flying home from Germany last weekend to begin preparing for the initial fallout from Trump Jr.’s 2016 meeting. And then just six days later, as Air Force One was returning from France, more news was breaking about Trump Jr’s shifting account of the meeting, again launching a bad news cycle and straining the credibility of the president’s defence team.
Thursday, June 04, 2026
