(California Political Review) — There is one bottom line truth regarding the meeting that is causing Donald Trump Jr. such agita at the moment: not a political operative worth their salt in either party would have turned down the meeting. Opposition research, the long, detailed, mostly boring job of performing multiple colonoscopies on your political opponent’s background is standard operating procedure. It occasionally involves anonymous tips and “over the transom” document delivery. Anyone with the slightest knowledge of politics knows this. Add in the fact that nothing of note occurred in that 20 minute meeting and the wails and outrage coming from the “resistance” are as sincere as Captain Renault’s shock at the gambling in Rick’s Café.
But following the rule of “any port in a storm”, the “resistance” blob consisting of the Democrats, their lapdog media, George Soros funded astro-turf groups and a couple of NeverTrump GOP Senators not worth the powder to blow them up (yes, John McCain and Lindsey Graham, I’m talking about you) is furiously rousing the rabble. Unless there are any political virgins in the above group, and there are not, the outrage is total Kabuki theatre – insincere, hypocritical political posturing.
As a political consultant who knows that class of people all too well, I never thought I’d wish that more Americans thought like us. I do in this instance. Every consultant in America and likely the world is looking at the Trump meeting with the Ruskie Femme Fatale, scratching their heads and asking “what’s the big deal”. Everybody, quite literally everybody, engaged in a serious campaign does opposition research. If you don’t you will lose badly and deserve to do so. Of course the Democrat operatives can’t admit that, but it is absolutely true.
