REPROGRAM THE TRUMPBOTS!:

Trump's lawyer/spokesman Rudolph W. Giuliani appeared on Fox News's and CNN's morning shows on Monday to downplay the idea that colluding with the Russians would have even been illegal and to argue against strawmen.

The most notable portion of the interviews was when Giuliani rekindled the idea that collusion isn't even a crime. Trump's defenders have occasionally noted that the word doesn't appear in the criminal code -- which is true but misleading-- but Giuliani took it a step further: He basically suggested Trump would have had to pay for Russia to interfere on his behalf.

"I don't even know if that's a crime -- colluding with Russians," Giuliani said on CNN. "Hacking is the crime."

In a back and forth with CNN's Alisyn Carmerota, he appears to say that two days before the meeting with the Russian lawyer there was a planning meeting to prepare for that meeting. This prep meeting would have been on June 7th, 2016. Giuliani says that meeting included Don Jr., Jared Kushner, Manafort, Rick Gates and others.

Now, I've had some off the grid moments in the last ten days. But I don't think I'd ever heard of this planning meeting. If nothing else, it suggests that the Trump team took the planned encounter with the Russian government emissary much more seriously than they've suggested to date. And then there's Rick Gates, Manafort's deputy. As we know, Gates is now a cooperating witness. Big problem for the Trump Team, if he was at such a planning meeting.

Giuliani's key aim throughout is to insist that Trump was not in that meeting. He seems to allow that Cohen was in the meeting, just that Cohen's lying about Trump's presence. But that point (Cohen's presence) is less clear to me. Again, watch the video.

The other point is the date: June 7th. That's the date when Trump made that primary election night victory speech where he teased his upcoming anti-Hillary speech where he'd reveal a bunch of new dirt on Hillary, a speech that ended up never happening.

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