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Ten damning Trump/Russia headlines leading up to Sessions' Sept. 8 meeting with Russian ambassador

By Kerry Eleveld
Thursday Mar 02, 2017 · 2:17 PM CST

A Nexis search of "Russia" and "Donald Trump" in U.S. publications during the week leading up to Jeff Sessions’ newly discovered Sept. 8 meeting with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak produces some 850 search results.

Sessions' defense of that meeting and his failure to disclose it under oath has involved three main claims: 1) he doesn't have "a strong recollection" of what was said; 2) he took the meeting in his capacity as a senator, not a campaign surrogate; 3) the meeting wasn't to "discuss issues of the campaign."

Setting aside the completely contradictory nature of those assertions for a second, the claims just don't pass the smell test, so to speak, when you consider the week of headlines that immediately preceded their meeting. Not only was news of Russian meddling and Trump’s unusual posture toward the Kremlin coursing through media round the world, it was dominating U.S. politics. Here’s 10 headlines leading up to the Sept. 8 Sessions-Kislyak meeting in chronological order:

1) September 1, ABC News: “FBI Warns Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton Staffers to Beware of Foreign Spies in US”

2) September 2, U.S. News: “Putin says DNC Hacks Not From Him”

3) September 4, Huffington Post: “Tim Kaine Compares Trump’s Russian Hack Comments To Watergate”

4) September 5, New York Times: “Hillary Clinton Accuses Russia of Interfering With U.S. Election”

5) September 5, Washington Post: “U.S. investigating potential covert Russian plan to disrupt November elections”

6) September 5, Politico: “Obama warns of cyber 'arms race' with Russia”

7) September 7, Wall Street Journal: “Ash Carter Warns Russia Against Interfering in ‘Democratic Process’”

8) September 7, RadioFreeEurope: “Trump Strikes Back At Clinton Over U.S. Relations With Russia”

9) September 8, Washington Post: “Trump praises Putin at national security forum”

10) September 8, ABC News: “Kremlin Declines to Comment on Donald Trump's Latest Praise of Vladimir Putin”

Those last two headlines ran Thursday morning, the day of Sessions’ meeting with Kislyak, after a Wednesday night national security forum in which Trump memorably called Putin a "better leader" than Obama.

During that NBC forum, for which interviewer Matt Lauer drew scathing reviews, Trump also touted Putin's "82 percent approval rating," said "when he calls me brilliant, I'll take the compliment," and "I think I'd be able to get along with him."

And now we are supposed to believe that Kislyak and Sessions sat down to discuss some trivial niceties related to the weather, perhaps football, or maybe upcoming holiday plans. Sorry, Jeff, it's hard to put a finger on why—but it just doesn't seem plausible that the conversation was so unremarkable that you don't recall much about it or its contents, and inadvertently left it out of your sworn testimony.

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/3/2/1639497/-Ten-damning-Trump-Russia-headlines-leading-up-to-Sessions-Sept-8-meeting-with-Russian-ambassador#read-more