
Republican strategist and anchor Nicolle Wallace buried Trump's favorite Russia talking point.

Donald Trump kicked off the new year with a flurry of absurd and reckless distractions, but the Russia investigation continues to be an existential threat to his presidency.

And he just lost one of his favorite deflection tactics.

While Trump was enjoying his golf vacation and throwing a lavish for-profit New Year's Eve party in Florida, The New York Times was breaking the news that the FBI investigation into Trump campaign collusion began as the result of loose-lipped and now-convicted Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos' drunken boasts to an Australian diplomat.


According to The Times, Papadopoulos bragged to Australian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom Alexander Downer that the Russians possessed "dirt" on Hillary Clinton in May of 2016. After hacked emails began showing up online, Australian intelligence officials shared Papadopoulos' revelation with U.S. intelligence officials.

"The hacking and the revelation that a member of the Trump campaign may have had inside information about it were driving factors that led the F.B.I. to open an investigation in July 2016 into Russia’s attempts to disrupt the election," the Times reported.

On Tuesday afternoon, MSNBC host and longtime Republican consultant Nicolle Wallace pointed out that this new reporting effectively kills Trump's new favorite talking point that the infamous "Steele dossier" was the genesis of the investigation, and that it was tainted by that dossier's political origins.

"That ruse is dead," Wallace declared.

"This seems like a nail in the coffin of that story as being the thing that instigated" the FBI investigation into Trump campaign ties with Russia, she added.

Trump has tried to spin a narrative in which the FBI colluded with Democrats to nail him with the dossier, a weak defense to begin with considering how much of the dossier's contents have been confirmed.

But as Wallace points out, this new reporting utterly destroys that feeble notion.

And since Papadopoulos is now a cooperating witness for special counsel Robert Mueller, it will only become more impossible for Trump to escape or deny the truth.