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In the past couple of days we’ve seen several emails showing that during the time Donald Trump was running for president there were internal conversations at the Trump Organization about building a Trump Tower in Moscow. But was Trump himself involved? ABC News says yes:

Four months into his campaign for President of the United States, Donald Trump signed a “letter of intent” to pursue a Trump Tower-style building development in Moscow, according to a statement from the then-Trump Organization chief counsel, Michael Cohen. ….The involvement of then-candidate Trump in a proposed Russian skyscraper deal contradicts repeated statements Trump made during the campaign, including telling ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that his business had “no relationship to Russia whatsoever.”

Needless to say, this is why so many people were suspicious of Trump’s weasely statements about Russia during the campaign. Does a letter of intent count as a “relationship” with Russia? Or does it only become a relationship if you actually end up signing a deal to do something?

Most of us would say that an LOI does indeed imply a relationship, but to Trump this is all meaningless. It’s not a matter of whether his words are truthful, but whether his words work. Since he won the election, that means his words were the right ones to use. Only losers worry about anything else.