Former presidential adviser David Axelrod on Friday praised conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer for saying that Donald Trump Jr.'s failed meeting with the Russian lawyer last year was still collusion by the Republican candidate's campaign.
"He's absolutely right," Axelrod, who served former President Barack Obama, told Ana Cabrera on CNN. "The issue isn't what happened in that meeting; it's what happened that led up to that meeting."
Citing the emails Trump Jr. released on Tuesday, Krauthammer said in his syndicated column Friday that "the evidence is now shown.
"This is not hearsay, not fake news, not unsourced leaks. This is an email chain released by Donald Trump Jr. himself.
"Donald Jr. emails back. 'I love it.' Fatal words," Krauthammer later said.
"Once you've said 'I'm in,' it makes no difference that the meeting was a bust, that the intermediary brought no such goods.
"What matters is what Donald Jr. thought going into the meeting, as well as [brother-in-law] Jared Kushner and then-campaign manager Paul Manafort, who were copied on the correspondence, invited to the meeting, and attended," he said.
"It turned out to be incompetent collusion, amateur collusion, comically failed collusion," Krauthammer concluded. "That does not erase the fact that three top Trump campaign officials were ready to play.
"Even if nothing else is found, the evidence is damning."
Axelrod told Cabrera that "I admire Charles Krauthammer for being so forthright about this.
"He has been a defender of the administration.
"But he obviously felt misled, as I think many other people did."
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