Donald Trump Jr. is increasingly at the center of the Trump-Russia investigation, what with the Trump Tower meeting with Russians who offered dirt on Hillary Clinton and the Wikileaks messages. But that’s not stopping him from continuing to run his mouth as if he faces no danger, and one of his friends explains the keen strategic thinking involved:
“He’s very smart to be in the spotlight,” said Charlie Kirk, a friend and the founder of the conservative college and high school group Turning Point USA. “Would they stop the investigation if he stopped tweeting? He’s in a situation where either you defend yourself, reassure the base, reassure the supporters, or stay silent. And if you’re totally silent, it only increases suspicion.”
The Trump base is with him, Kirk added: “Most people can’t even keep up with this stuff, anyway.”
It’s almost like this guy is intent on making Josh Marshall look like a prophet. Back in July, Marshall wrote:
The abiding sense I get is not simply that they don’t know the magnitude of the legal threat but that they don’t understand the nature of the threat either. Again and again they seem to think the legal vulnerability can be trumped by good news cycles or getting the press to focus on some other individual. They don’t seem to get that a big, sprawling federal investigation like this, untethered from the political chain of command and led by one of the top law enforcement professionals of his generation, trundles onward with a perfect indifference to whether you win the morning or kill it in 10 or a 100 different news cycles. Those things just don’t matter.
I mean ... “Would they stop the investigation if he stopped tweeting?” Well, no, but they might have a harder time if Junior didn’t keep handing over helpful information. “He’s in a situation where either you defend yourself, reassure the base, reassure the supporters, or stay silent.” Um, or you consider that the major legal investigation is more important than reassuring the base, and that defending yourself to the base at the cost of potentially incriminating yourself legally is a bad bet.
The arrogance and stupidity are breathtaking.