Thursday in Paris a joint news conference with the French President Emmanuel Macron, President Donald Trump defended his son’s decision to take a meeting with a Russian attorney.

Trump said, “My son is a wonderful young man. He took a meeting with a Russian lawyer. Not a government lawyer but a Russian lawyer. It was a short meeting.”

He continued, “I think from a practical standpoint most people would have taken that meeting. Its called opposition research or research into your opponent. I’ve had many people — I’ve only been in politics for two years, but I’ve had many people call up and say, ‘Oh, gee, we have information on this factor or this person’ or frankly Hillary. That’s very standard in politics. Politics is not the nicest business in the world. But it’s very standard where they have information, and you take the information. In the case of Don, he listened. I guess they talked about — as I see it they talked about adoption and some things. Adoption wasn’t even a part of the campaign. But nothing happened from the meeting. Zero happened from the meeting. And honestly, I think the press made a very big deal about something really a lot of people would do.”

He added, “Now, the lawyer that went to the meeting, I say that she was in the halls of Congress also. Somebody said that her visa or her passport to come into the country was approved by Attorney General Lynch. Now maybe that’s wrong. I just heard that a little while ago. I was a little surprised to hear that. She was here because of Lynch.”

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