The idea that Russia was off the radar when Donald Trump Jr. took the meeting struck many as strange, especially Trump’s critics. | Getty Trump and son suffering from amnesia on ‘Russia fever,’ critics say

There was no “Russian fever” in June 2016, Donald Trump Jr. says now, as he tries to justify his meeting with a Kremlin-connected lawyer who promised dirt on Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. President Donald Trump has repeated the talking point in defending his eldest son.

“And you have to understand, when that took place, this was before Russia fever,” Trump told Reuters in an interview Wednesday. “There was no Russia fever back then, that was at the beginning of the campaign, more or less. There was no Russia fever.”


Just the day before Trump Jr. received the email promising dirt, however, Clinton had devoted significant time in a major foreign policy speech to slamming Trump’s warmth toward the Russian regime. Indeed, for months Trump critics had been questioning why the candidate was so full of praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“And he said if he were grading Vladimir Putin as a leader, he’d give him an A. Now, I’ll leave it to the psychiatrists to explain his affection for tyrants,” Clinton said in the June 2 speech. “I just wonder how anyone could be so wrong about who America’s real friends are. Because it matters. If you don’t know exactly who you’re dealing with, men like Putin will eat your lunch.”

And for months, questions had already been swirling around Trump’s campaign chairman at the time, Paul Manafort, who had significant ties to pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine. As early as February 2016, Trump had noted in a speech that “Putin called me a genius” — a compliment he would repeat again and again throughout the campaign.

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While it wasn’t revealed until mid-June by the Democratic National Committee that Russia was behind the hack of its servers, the idea that Russia was off the radar when Trump Jr. took the meeting struck many as strange, especially Trump’s critics.

“I’m not sure how it’s a defense, even if you accept the premise that the attention on Russia was not as pointed as it became,” said Brian Fallon, Clinton’s former campaign press secretary. “The criticisms still apply in terms of he was presented with an invitation to a meeting with someone who was described as a Russian government lawyer.”

But even with that, Fallon said, “I don’t agree with the premise. ... There was already a lot of skepticism about Donald Trump’s repeated expressions of favorable sentiments toward Putin and Russia.”

The question of whether or not Russia was on center stage struck many as irrelevant.

“The notion that it wasn’t at the national level yet strikes me as untrue, but I don’t see the connection between that claim and trying to find some sort of exculpatory rationale for taking this meeting,” said Ned Price, a former CIA officer and National Security Council spokesman in the Obama administration. “It’s really irrelevant.”

Regardless of the media environment, Price said, “to take a meeting with a self-professed agent of the Russian government” remains “potentially a crime.”

Longtime Russia watchers also said there was plenty of scrutiny around the Kremlin and its intentions toward Trump around the time of the controversial meeting.

“My own sense is that there was concern in the summer,” said Harley Balzer, a former Georgetown University professor and director of the school’s Center of Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies. “I think the fever is a result of repeated denials that were revealed to be lies.”

Indeed, the Russia storm that Trump labels “fake news” and a “witch hunt” was brewing strongly by the late summer of 2016. Former CIA Director Michael Morell took to the pages of The New York Times to raise the alarm about Trump’s attitude toward Russia that August, painting a picture of just how long the Russia trouble had been in the works.

“President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was a career intelligence officer, trained to identify vulnerabilities in an individual and to exploit them. That is exactly what he did early in the primaries. Mr. Putin played upon Mr. Trump’s vulnerabilities by complimenting him. He responded just as Mr. Putin had calculated,” Morell wrote.

Of course, the issue has only taken on more prominence in recent months as the intelligence community concluded Russia waged an influence campaign to help elect Trump and a special prosecutor investigates whether the Trump campaign colluded in the effort.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

