After Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. indicted the Trump Organization and its Chief Financial Officer, Allen Weisselberg, members of the Trump family were making a full-court press on right-wing media to try and downplay the seriousness of the charges against their company.
On Fox News, Eric Trump — who has the title of Executive Vice President of Trump Org. — sounded outraged that prosecutors would dare to indict anyone for such a paltry sum of money:
“Crime is rampant, people are leaving the city in record numbers, it’s dirty, it’s disgusting — New York is no longer what it is. And they have an entire district attorney’s office and attorney general’s office that’s focused on $3.5 million to take down a political opponent?
“I mean, this is what they do, this is New York state for you. This is worse than a banana republic. “It’s truly horrible.”
Eric also made an appearance on Newsmax, where he seemed to suggest that he and his family were so “clean” that to indict their family business was just flat-out wrong:
“We’ve always led amazingly clean lives and believe me if they could have, they already would of right? That’s what they wanted, that was their own goal.”
And then he pivoted to Hunter Biden:
“The difference is that I’m not Hunter Biden. I’m not selling paintings to undisclosed people for a half a million dollars apiece. I’m not doing drugs in shady hotels. I’m not going out and soliciting prostitution and I’m not going out and selling influence to Ukraine and China and having lavish trips paid for while my father’s commander in chief, no I’m not doing that.”
Nifty whataboutism, huh?
Don Jr. also joined the obfuscation parade, according to HuffPost:
“‘But the Manhattan district attorney’s charges were ‘the political persecution of a political enemy,’ Donald Trump Jr. declared on Fox News.
“It was ‘no different’ to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s treatment of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.”
Alexi Navalny was poisoned with nerve gas and is currently serving time in a Russian gulag. Yeah, that’s totally the same thing as what the Trump family is going through.
Puh-lease!
However, it is interesting to noted that Junior referenced a Russian opposition leader. Seems Russia is never far from the mind of any Trump. That must be part of the deal they made with Putin: To talk about the Kremlin as often as possible in exchange for lots of money.
When you’re defense is “But we only stole a few million,” you know you’re screwed. And it couldn’t possibly happen to more deserving grifters.
