Donald Trump, Jr. joined Fox News' Sean Hannity for a predictably sympathetic interview last night about his June 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer regarding possible "dirt" on Hillary Clinton. This would appear to be exactly the kind of collusion between Trump campaign operatives and Kremlin-connected officials that we've been hearing so much about. But according to Junior—and Hannity—this is all much ado about nothing. And what about Hillary?

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It's worth looking at the variety of excuses Trump, Jr. produced here. Most boiled down to I didn't know any better, and I didn't get any dirt anyway.

"Someone sent me an email. I can't help what someone sends me."

But Trump replied after 17 minutes that he "loved" the idea of the meeting and began working to set it up.

"I think it's pretty common."

It is unprecedented for the son of a president to have taken a meeting during the presidential campaign seeking dirt on an opponent from the known representative of a foreign adversarial government.

"This is pre-Russia fever, this is pre-Russia mania, before the rest of the world was talking about this trying to build up that narrative."

The "Russia Mania" exists because the U.S. intelligence community found with high confidence that Russia meddled in our election to tip it in favor of Donald J. Trump, and because multiple members of the Trump campaign have repeatedly been shown to have had dealings with Russian government officials and then lied about it. Jared Kushner, for instance, failed to disclose this meeting in his initial security clearance filing. Trump, Jr. lied when at first he said it was just about adoption laws. Michael Flynn lied about his phone call with the Russian ambassador, when they discussed American sanctions against Russia, and was ultimately fired. Jeff Sessions seemed to lie under oath—though there's been no discussion of a perjury charge—about meeting with the Russian ambassador during the campaign. Paul Manafort was forced out of the campaign after The New York Times reported he took multi-million-dollar payments from Ukrainian officials and groups tied to the Kremlin.

That's why there's Russia Fever.

"I don't think my sirens went up...because it's wasn't the issue that it's been made out to be over the last 9 months, 10 months."

Again, the Russia issue has grown because evidence of ties between Trump campaign figures and Russian officials has grown. And Junior's "sirens" should have "gone up," because he was being offered compromising material on an American political opponent by the representative of the government of a geopolitical adversary, whom he was expressly told was trying to influence an American election. Junior, I suppose he'd say, just didn't know any better—it was his first campaign!

"I didn't know anything about [the lawyer]. An acquaintance sent me this email. As a courtesy to him, I said, 'OK, let's meet.' But I didn't know who I was meeting beforehand, never heard of the person."

Junior claimed to not know the lawyer's name before the meeting, but he knew she was, according to the email he almost inexplicably published himself on Twitter yesterday, a "Russian government attorney" who'd received information from "the Russian crown prosecutor." Again, this is enough to make it a no-go. He doesn't need to know her name.

Plus, he took it "as a courtesy"? Trump wrote, "I love it."

When, in the meeting, the lawyer turned to adoption—and didn't come up with the goods—Junior says he was taken aback, and when they were walking out:

"[Goldstone] apologized, basically for wasting my time."

Again, this defense is: I wanted to collude, but they didn't come up with the goods. This is not the strongest argument for, say, a court proceeding.

"In retrospect, I probably would have done things a little differently."

No shit. Although this implies it was some sort of process problem, rather than a taking dirt from a Russian government lawyer problem.

"That's why I released the stuff today. I wanted to get it all out there....I'm more than happy to be transparent about it."

The New York Times had the emails Tuesday morning and had asked Junior for comment. He and his team asked for more time, then he promptly released them himself, citing "transparency." It's not transparency when the guillotine is already descending overhead.

And then, Hannity: Did you tell your father?

"There was nothing to tell."

Nope, nothing. Although Trump the Elder's speech around the time of the meeting seems a bit different in retrospect.

And then the rest was about Hillary Clinton—particularly the repeatedly, exhaustingly debunked claim she sold 20 percent of American uranium holdings to Russia.

And then there was this joker, right before Hannity's show kicked off:

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State TV never looked so...cranberry.

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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