OUR FAILING PRESIDENT’S TRUST ISSUE WIDENS

The Trump administration is a virtual Society to Save Print Journalism.

Aside from President Trump’s generally divisive character, statements and actions, his affinity for Vladimir Putin — along with his myriad business, personal and campaign connections to all things Russian — couldn’t make better news stories.

Taken together, the Russian connections are too many and too pointed to be coincidental — despite Trump’s many public protests that “Russia is a ruse.”

On Wednesday, The New York Times reported that the Obama administration, after the election and before Trump’s inauguration, became desperately concerned about the growing evidence of Russia’s interference in the U.S. election. So concerned, in fact, that White House officials worked to spread that evidence across government. Officials had two aims: Ensure that the Russian meddling isn’t duplicated in the future, and leave a clear trail of intelligence for government investigators.

Some key sentences of the Times story are: “American allies, including the British and the Dutch, had provided information describing meetings” between Russian officials and people close to Putin “and associates of President-elect Trump, according to three former American officials who requested anonymity in discussing classified intelligence. Separately, American intelligence agencies had intercepted communications of Russian officials, some of them within the Kremlin, discussing contacts with Trump associates.”

Within about an hour of that story breaking, The Washington Post reported that Trump’s new Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, had met twice with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. during the presidential campaign, despite seeming to deny such contact during his confirmation hearing.

In short order, the Justice Department official confirmed that Sessions had two conversations with Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak last year — once in July and again in September — when Sessions was still a senator and after he became a Trump surrogate and campaign adviser. Kislyak is the same Russian that Trump’s former national security adviser, former Gen. Michael Flynn, talked with about the Obama administration sanctions. Flynn then lied to the vice president-elect about those talks and ultimately was forced to resign after only 24 days in office.

Sessions, too, seems to have suffered temporary amnesia. While testifying at his Jan. 10 confirmation hearing, Sessions was asked what he would do “if there is any evidence” that anyone affiliated with the Trump team had communicated with the Russian government in the course of the campaign.

“I’m not aware of any of those activities. I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I didn’t have — did not have communications with the Russians, and I’m unable to comment on it,” Sessions said at the time. Just a few days later, Flynn resigned.

Justice Department officials acknowledged this week that Sessions had spoken with Kislyak twice: once, among a group of ambassadors who approached him at a Heritage Foundation event during the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in July and, separately, in a private office meeting on Sept. 8.

On Wednesday night, Sessions in a statement called the allegation “false,” and his spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores, said “there was absolutely nothing misleading about his answer” because he did not communicate with the ambassador in his capacity as a Trump campaign surrogate. She said he had at least 25 conversations in 2016 with ambassadors from a range of nations — including Britain, Japan, China, Germany and Russia — while on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

But on Thursday — in response to Democrats calling for Sessions’ resignation, and even some Republicans calling for him to at the very least recuse himself from overseeing any Justice Department investigation into contacts between the campaign and the Russian government — Sessions did recuse himself from probes of campaign ties to Russia.

He finally acknowledged the meetings, but said it didn’t occur to him to think about the timing of the meeting — while headlines were swirling over allegations of Russia hacking and talking with the Trump campaign.

Really? We’re supposed to believe that a lawyer smart enough to be the attorney general of our land doesn’t connect those dots? And doesn’t understand the magnitude of omissions or misstatements in a congressional hearing?

This will not be the last on this, no doubt.

Frankly, Sessions should resign, as did Flynn.

But this is not just about Sessions — any more than it was just about Flynn.

This is about Donald Trump and his entire administration’s difficulty with the truth.

This administration has a trust issue. A gaping trust issue — the likes of which this country has never seen. And it starts at the top with Trump himself.

But the media is on to him — and his administration. The king of fake news likes to tweet and dismiss real journalism as the product of “failing” media.

We call it the product of a fake and failing presidency.