Talk about grasping at straws! The big three morning shows went wild this morning hyping a supposedly new claim President Trump made about the infamous 2016 Trump Tower meeting. On Twitter, Trump admitted that the meeting was aimed at gathering opposition research on Hillary Clinton. Old news, right? Well the morning shows didn’t seem to think so, and ludicrously reported that this was a “stunning” reversal of everything the Trump campaign had said up to this point.
ABC anchor and former Clinton official George Stephanopoulos provided the silliest overreaction on Monday's Good Morning America, touting the tweet as a “stunning reversal” and “dramatic new admission” in the Russia investigation.
“Reversing course on previous denials, President now saying that the purpose of his son's Trump Tower meeting with the Russians was to get information on Hillary Clinton,” Stephanopoulos added.
Turning to senior White House correspondent Cecilia Vega for the new “fall out,” she hyped the White House’s explanations of the meeting as “shifting since day one":
But now his clearest admission yet on the true purpose to get dirt on Hillary Clinton. Tweeting, ‘this was a meeting to get information on an opponent. Totally legal and done all the time in politics and it went nowhere. I did not know about it.’
NBC’s Savannah Guthrie gushed on Today that it a “stunning about face” with Trump admitting “for the first time” that the meeting was to gather dirt on Clinton, while correspondent Peter Alexander touted it was “a striking acknowledgment after a year of denials and shifting stories.”
CBS This Morning was less dramatic but still called the tweet a “new explanation” from the President.
The problem is this isn't anything new at all. Trump made very similar comments back in July 2017 at a press conference with France’s Emmanuel Macron, that the networks even aired live.
“I do think this, that taken from a practical standpoint … most people would’ve taken that meeting. It’s called opposition research or research into your opponent” he said at the time, adding:
I’ve only been in politics for two years, but I’ve had many people call up, ‘Oh gee, we have information on this factor or this person,’ or, frankly, Hillary.That’s very standard in politics. Politics is not the nicest business in the world, but it’s very standard where they have information and you take the information, and I think the press made a very big deal out of something that really a lot [of people] would do.
Again, in a tweet from July 2017, Trump reiterated that it was normal to gather opposition research on your opponent:
Most politicians would have gone to a meeting like the one Don jr attended in order to get info on an opponent. That's politics!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 17, 2017
CBS This Morning was the only network to provide a clip of that press conference from last year. To complicate matters, Trump did mention talking about Russian adoptions during that meeting as well, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s said multiple times that the actual purpose was to gather opposition research.
Washington Examiner's Byron York noted the media’s overreaction on Fox News’s America’s Newsroom this morning, saying it was “simply not news” that the President admitted this today, since he said the same thing last year.
The Daily Caller reported it’s not just the networks going nuts over this supposed “scoop.” Print outlets like The Washington Post and New York Times also touted the tweet as some new development as well.
