Politics

Is Trump Jr’s Tweet About Russia And Hillary Clinton The Greatest Self-Own Of 2017?

This is an entertaining day on the internet.

by Sam Langford  12 July 2017
Trump Jr

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Donald Trump Jr. followed in his father’s illustrious footsteps overnight by tweeting a self-own so potent and dumbass it’s inspired headlines that straight-up proclaim “Donald Trump Jr. Is An Idiot”.

A former GOP strategist also went on live TV to say this about the emerging situation: 

If you haven’t been eagerly refreshing Twitter like a kid at Christmas, here’s the gist of it: Young Donald took to the tweets last night to post screenshots of an email exchange he was involved in during his dad’s presidential campaign.

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In the emails, he expresses great enthusiasm about setting up a meeting to receive “high level and sensitive information” that would supposedly incriminate Hillary Clinton — information that is explicitly described as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr Trump”.

Basically, Trump Jr. personally tweeted out the most substantial evidence to date that the Trump campaign was aware of and possibly even involved in Russian attempts to influence the US election. While some people are perhaps prematurely throwing around the word “treason”, the emails have certainly raised new questions about whether campaign laws were violated.

Trump Jr. claims to have released the full emails in the name of “transparency” — in reality, he did so because a request for comment tipped him off that The New York Times was about to publish them, effectively choosing to self-own instead of getting owned.

Trump Sr., meanwhile, has supported his son with a bizarre statement calling him a “high quality” person and saying he applauded his transparency, which the internet has obviously had a field day with.

There have also been more than a few comparisons to Arrested Development’s Gob Bluth, who shares Trump Jr.’s receding hairline, rich dad, and extraordinary capacity for poorly thought-out moves. 

Trump Jr. vehemently denies wrongdoing, but has noted that given the chance, he’d do things “a little differently” regarding the original meeting. He said that at the time of the meeting, his “sirens” didn’t go off because Russia’s potential involvement in the election wasn’t yet a huge media issue. For those playing at home, if your wrongdoing “sirens” are similarly malfunctioning, some cheap and effective substitutes include “common sense” and “using your brain”. 

It’s going to take a while for the full repercussions of Trump Jr.’s tweets to play out, and it’s as yet unclear how significant they will be, if at all, in investigations into Russian involvement in the election. If you’re interested in digging into the details of the situation, here’s an excellent video to get you started: