Show caption Alex Jones: ‘They tricked him into the meeting, he knew it was bull and he got out.’ Photograph: Lucas Jackson/Reuters US press and publishing Rightwing media struggles to defend Trump Jr’s meeting with Russia lawyer Younger Trump’s decision to publish own emails undermines Breitbart story as Infowars warns Trump Jr was ‘set up by the deep state’ Adam Gabbatt @adamgabbatt Wed 12 Jul 2017 09.07 EDT Share on Facebook

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Donald Trump Jr created a lot of work for his lawyers on Tuesday when he decided to release a string of emails which could incriminate himself, his brother-in-law and his dad’s former campaign manager. But it wasn’t just legal minds that were tested.

Journalists at Trump-supporting news sites and rightwing commentators had their work cut out as they attempted to spin the story of Trump Jr and an apparent Russian government attempt to damage Hillary Clinton’s election campaign.

The email chain, first reported by the New York Times, showed Trump Jr agreeing to meet with a “Russian government attorney” offering damaging information on Clinton as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr Trump”.

The Times initially cited sources with knowledge of the email chain, rather than publishing the emails themselves. That gave Breitbart, formerly led by Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, an opportunity to gloss over the accusations.

“New York Times has neither seen nor read ‘Russia email’ to Donald Trump Jr,” was Breitbart’s main take on Tuesday morning. “This is only the latest effort by the Times to bring down President Donald Trump that relies on documents it has not seen and verified.”

The story seemed to be working well as a distraction for Breitbart readers – guiding more than 4,000 commenters into a familiar, comfortable debate about bias in the liberal media.

But at 11am, with the Times preparing to publish his emails, Trump Jr decided to bite the bullet and post them himself. The Times ran its story at almost exactly the same time, and journalists at news organizations – including conservative outlets such as Fox News and the Washington Examiner – scrambled to follow up.

That wasn’t the case over at Breitbart, which valiantly stood by its attempt to discredit the Times’ reporting for more than an hour after Trump Jr himself confirmed it.

The site couldn’t ignore Trump Jr’s tweet for ever, of course, and just after 12pm it published a story headlined: “Donald Trump Jr releases ‘Russia email’ chain”. The article included the main accusations and the emails Trump Jr released, although it also included paragraphs from the earlier report about the New York Times not having seen the emails.

The story added: “The email does not refer to any cooperation, coordination or collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.”

The veneer of even-handedness did not last long. By 3.30pm the story had disappeared from Breitbart’s homepage – although it was still in the “most popular” section – to be replaced by a story on Donald Trump praising his son for publishing the damaging emails.

That article cut any mention of Trump Jr being promised information as part of Russian government support for his father.

Over at InfoWars, Alex Jones, arguably an even stauncher defender of Trump, said the liberal media had got it all wrong.

Trump Jr had been “set up by the deep state working through this bygone producer from Britain”, a guest told Jones, apparently referring to the Trump Jr associate Rob Goldstone, who set up the meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer. Goldstone works as a music promoter and represents the son of Aras Agalarov, a Moscow-based developer who tried to partner with Trump in a hotel project and has close ties to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.

“They tricked him into the meeting, he knew it was bull and he got out,” Jones said.

The Trump Jr discussion did not last long before Jones changed topic. Exclaiming “they’re trying to shut us down”, Jones moved on to claim the Federal Elections Commission was planning to investigate the “editorial decisions of Infowars, the Drudge Report, and Breitbart”.

It was a story based on an FEC letter that suggests nothing of the sort.

A number of less famous rightwing commentators followed Jones’s lead. Bill Mitchell, host of the YourVoice America YouTube show and with almost 250,000 Twitter followers, saw nothing untoward in Trump Jr’s emails.

“And just like that, another blockbuster from the NYTimes (Don Jr Story) ends up being pure bullsh*t,” he wrote after the emails were released. “It never ends.”

Mitchell offered no explanation for that tweet, or for a later message in which he declared: “The fact Don Jr even spoke to this woman proves there was no coordination between the Trump campaign and russia.”

Other Trump defenders offered similarly robust, and similarly vague, comments.

“This is just basic campaigning,” wrote Charlie Kirk on Twitter.

Mike Cernovich, a Trump blogger and Pizzagate conspiracy theorist whose Twitter profile describes him as a national security reporter, drew the same conclusion.

“Don Jr had to release the email himself because it doesn’t support the lying Times conspiracy, that’s why they never released the emails!” Cernovich wrote on Twitter.

In a sign that the far-right has consistency in both its message and language, a fellow Pizzagater, Jack Posobiec, toed the party line.

“Is there an emoji for Nothingburger yet?” Posobiec tweeted.