In his latest tweet, Donald Trump admitted that his son met with the Russians and that the goal was to get information about a political opponent.
"Fake news reporting, it's a complete fabrication that I'm concerned about my wonderful son Donald meeting in Trump Tower. It was a meeting to get information about an opponent, completely legal and done all the time in politics - and it got nowhere. I didn't know for that," Trump said.
Trump tweeted in response to a Washington Post article that reported Trump was concerned his son had inadvertently entered a no-go zone.
Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin states that with this tweet, Trump has potentially dug himself a political grave.
She explains that it is a gift of sorts to Robert Mueller and his team, as Trump confirms that the meeting with the Russians was to get something of value - something incriminating about Hillary Clinton.
That could be a violation of federal law that prohibits presidential candidates from soliciting anything of value from non-US citizens.
At the moment, the strongest evidence of a violation of the law is precisely the e-mail of Trump's son, and now the tweet of Trump himself, who defends himself by saying that he did not know about the meeting, which suggests that it would have been a problem if he had.
But he knew about the meeting at least later, and he issued a false statement at the time, and campaign announcements that he would come out with dirt on Hillary at some point are telling.
Trump apparently doesn't realize, Rubin comments, that the meeting itself is a conspiracy to violate federal campaign laws. Insisting that it is legal to get dirty information from foreigners is politically and morally offensive and shows that his claim that the Russians were against him winning is a lie.
Also, the email says that Trump's son tried to cover up the true purpose of the meeting because he talked about adopting children.
Rubin wonders if this now means an open admission that the presidential campaign was helped by a foreign power and asks if it is an abomination of the concept of democracy, because not only citizens questioned the election of the American president.
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