While some Fox News programs have together formed a dependable pravda network for the Trump administration, others appear to be fed up. Enter Bret Baier, one of the channel's few actual news reporters, and Kellyanne Conway, Trumpworld's most reprehensible spin merchant. The discussion began with the administration's response to Hurricane Harvey and North Korea's belligerent missile test. But then the conversation turned to new revelations about Russia—specifically, that the Trump Organization pursued a deal to build a Trump Tower in Moscow while Trump was running for president, and that Michael Cohen, a close Trump associate, seemed prepared to coordinate with Kremlin officials close to Vladimir Putin on said deal.

Conway adopted a familiar strategy to try to escape the topic, but Baier wasn't interested:

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"Nothing came of it," Conway said quickly, "there isn't a Trump Tower in Moscow, no visit was made. You'll recall that Michael Cohen was really besmirched by many this year." Thus began a breathless scattergun defense from the counselor to the president, as she threw everything at the wall—except for a real response to the question at hand—in the hopes something might stick. After all, the issue isn't whether the deal was successful, it's that they attempted to close it while Trump was running and showed they were prepared to work with the Kremlin-connected intermediaries with checkered backgrounds, like Felix Sater, to get it done.

But no matter. Conway was just warming up. Hillary Clinton is the only real reason Trump won, she said, mentioning the failed candidate's upcoming book. "We were promised the investigation would show [that] but for collusion, Donald Trump would not be president," she added. No one promised that, because you can't prove that. The investigation is concerned with whether or not there was collusion, not whether it was the determining factor in the election. Conway knows that, of course. She also knows it's not relevant how many interviews Democratic leaders like Mark Warner and Adam Schiff are doing, and that it's impossible for her to know that they spend "more time on TV than they do investigating this matter." She also knows that even if she wasn't just making that up, it wouldn't absolve her boss. The only thing less relevant is Debbie Wasserman Schultz's IT aide, who was indeed arrested for a totally unrelated crime. But Conway knows that, too.

The relevant detail, which Baier mentioned off the bat, is that we now know from that same Michael Cohen that during the campaign Donald Trump signed a letter of intent on this deal to bring a Trump Tower to Moscow. That means he was more than familiar with his organization's activities in Russia. He then said, repeatedly and unequivocally, that he had "nothing to do with Russia." Baier played the many clips of him saying as much, and Conway didn't have anything approaching a justification. Until we get another explanation, can we really conclude anything other than that Trump's claim was a lie?

After all, these are the same people who said over and over again that there were no contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian officials—of any kind, at all, ever. What do we call those claims, now that we know what we know?

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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