Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post blasted “idiot” Donald Trump Jr. as “Dumb. Dumb. Dumb” in a scathing editorial on Wednesday regarding his previously undisclosed meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer.
“We see one truly solid takeaway from the story of the day: Donald Trump Jr. is an idiot,” the Post’s editorial board wrote.
The editorial continued: “In the heat of your father’s presidential campaign, a bozo British publicist emails you to set up a sit-down with a ‘Russian government attorney’ promising ‘documents and information’ to ‘incriminate Hillary’ courtesy of the ‘Crown prosecutor of Russia’ as ‘part of’ the Russian government’s ‘support’ for Dad — and you eagerly take the meeting.”
Murdoch’s news organizations are typically friendlier to the Trump administration than most outlets. The president’s eldest son even went on the Murdoch-owned Fox News to offer his side of the story on Tuesday night.
Host Sean Hannity asked Trump Jr. if he now regretted the meeting that also included Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner and took place in June 2016, two weeks after his father, Donald Trump, landed the Republican nomination for president. It’s the first confirmed private meeting between the Russians and Trump’s team.
“In retrospect, I probably would have done things a little differently,” he told Hannity. “Again, this is before the Russia mania — this is before they were building this up in the press.”
The Post’s editorial board is not impressed with Trump Jr.’s explanation.
“Don Jr. is why Nigerian email scammers keep trying their luck,” former Post staffer Kyle Smith says in the editorial.
“Worse, he dragged brother-in-law Jared Kushner and then-campaign chief Paul Manafort into the meeting, which proved to be a bid by a Moscow fixer to undo a US law causing trouble for her clients,” the editorial says. “Oh, and someone was so careless with the email trail that it all wound up being fed to the New York Times, for days of headlines that (at best) undermine President Trump’s agenda as both health and tax reform hang in the balance in Congress.”
The scathing editorial concludes: “Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. As were Junior’s shifting, incomplete accounts of the meeting under days of Times questioning. Democrats and the media are frothing to find something criminal in it all, with the most unhinged talking treason. What it clearly was was criminally stupid.”