Trump Tweets About “Young and Beautiful Lives” Destroyed by Russia Investigation

Poor George.

AP Photo/Mike Stewart

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While outrage spreads about reports of immigrant children who the government placed with traffickers and then lost by the hundreds, Donald Trump is spending his Sunday morning decrying the treatment of another group of young people: those whose lives have been “devastated and destroyed” by the Russia investigation.

“Who’s going to give back the young and beautiful lives (and others) that have been devastated and destroyed by the phony Russia Collusion Witch Hunt?” Trump tweeted Sunday morning. “They journeyed down to Washington, D.C., with stars in their eyes and wanting to help our nation…They went back home in tatters!”

Trump seems to be referring to young upstarts like George Papadopolous, the 30-year-old advisor to his presidential campaign who tried to set up a back channel between the campaign and the Kremlin in 2016, then pled guilty to lying about it to the FBI. Or maybe he’s talking about Hope Hicks, the 29-year-old former White House communications director who resigned a day after telling a House Intelligence Committee that she had occasionally been asked to tell “white lies” on behalf of the Trump administration. 

It’s not the first time Trump has tried to blame the Russian investigation for the sad state of the country’s affairs. In February, he tweeted that the FBI is “spending too much time trying to prove Russian collusion with the Trump campaign.”

The think-about-the-children line of defense is especially galling, but what else is the president supposed to do on a Sunday morning? It’s not like he’s busy.

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do things differently in the aftermath of a political crisis: Watergate. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after, and go deep on, stories others don’t. And we’re a nonprofit newsroom because we knew corporations and billionaires would never fund the journalism we do. Our reporting makes a difference in policies and people’s lives changed.

And we need your support like never before to vigorously fight back against the existential threats American democracy and journalism face. We’re running behind our online fundraising targets and urgently need all hands on deck right now. We can’t afford to come up short—we have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

Please help with a donation today if you can—even just a few bucks helps. Not ready to donate but interested in our work? Sign up for our Daily newsletter to stay well-informed—and see what makes our people-powered, not profit-driven, journalism special.

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