Just hours after White House spokesman Sean Spicer said President Trump had received assurances from a key senator that the idea of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia was a “hoax,” a spokesman for the senator, Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, denied any such conversation.”Sen. Grassley has not spoken to President Trump about what he has learned in briefings related to investigations into Russian interference in our elections, and he has never referred to the notion of collusion as a ‘hoax,’” Grassley’s spokesman, Taylor Foy, emailed Yahoo News. Grassley is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and together with ranking minority member Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., has been briefed on details of the FBI investigation into Russian meddling in last year’s presidential election.
Oops.Even for this White House’s creative approach to political rhetoric, “hoax” is clearly the wrong word. The president and members of his team claimed for months that no one on Team Trump spoke to Russia while Russia was illegally intervening in the U.S. election, and those claims have now been discredited. What’s under investigation now is whether — and to what extent — Team Trump may have cooperated with Moscow’s espionage operation intended to put Trump in the White House.The question is still very much under investigation, and the probes are likely to be ongoing for months. Trump, Spicer, and others may hope that evidence of collusion doesn’t end the president’s term, but the idea that the allegations themselves are a “hoax” is plainly ridiculous.But even looking past curious word choice, Spicer made it sound as if the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee told the president the whole idea of collusion would inevitably collapse. First, Grassley couldn’t draw such a conclusion — the investigations are just now intensifying — and second, Grassley couldn’t share such baseless speculation with the president who may be brought down by the results of the ongoing probes.No wonder the GOP senator’s office effectively said, “Um, no.”The follow-up for Spicer today should be obvious: since the White House’s source just sold the press secretary out, does Team Trump have any actual sources we can ask to verify these dubious assertions?
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."