Trump Campaign Declares It Will Do Collusion on a 'Case by Case Basis'

Donald Trump’s 2020 press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said on CBS on Thursday that the campaign would handle offers of opposition research from foreign governments on a “case by case basis.” Cool!

McEnany echoed what Trump said in his wide-ranging interview with ABC News earlier this week, when he told George Stephanopoulos, “I think maybe you do both,” in response to a question over whether he’d use dirt on an opponent provided by a foreign government or turn the information over to the FBI. When informed that FBI director Chris Wray had said that there should be no question about whether or not to hand over the information, Trump responded, “The FBI director is wrong.”

“The president’s directive, as he said, [it’s] a case by case basis,” McEnany told CBS. “He said he would likely do both: Listen to what they have to say, but also report it to the FBI.” (Trump, in that ABC News interview, also said: “I don’t think in my whole life I’ve ever called the FBI. In my whole life. You don’t call the FBI.”)

Because 2016 will truly never end, McEnany also brought up the Steele dossier, which she said was “written by a British spy, paid for the DNC and Hillary Clinton, and that information being from Russian sources given to a British spy perpetuated through the FBI.” That gave way to this funny CBS kicker:

Although many Republicans have said so, the salacious dossier compiled by Steele was not the genesis of the Russia investigation opened by the FBI.

What we have here is the Trump campaign essentially announcing it’s open season for foreign governments, ex-spies from other countries, and the like to attempt to intervene in another American election, while Mitch McConnell refuses to let bills increasing election security come up for a vote in the Senate and the Democratic-led House leadership responds with a poster.