PBS高端访谈:小特朗普与俄罗斯相关律师会面的消息甚嚣尘上

搜索关注在线英语听力室公众号：tingroom，领取免费英语资料大礼包。

　　And this time, it involves the president's son. John Yang begins our coverage⁴.

　　White House officials said today that Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting last summer with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer was just business as usual.

　　President Trump's counselor⁵ Kellyanne Conway:

　　This was standard operating procedure for the campaign. Let's focus on what didn't happen in that meeting.

　　No information provided that was meaningful. No action taken. Nothing.

　　The New York Times first reported the June 2016 meeting between Donald Trump Jr.,

　　then campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, and Natalia Veselnitskaya.

　　The president's son said he had been told that Veselnitskaya had damaging information about Hillary Clinton, who had clinched⁶ the Democratic nomination⁷ just days before.

　　The meeting came as some Republicans openly talked of trying to deny Mr. Trump their party's nomination at the convention.

　　On Saturday, Donald Trump Jr. described the session as a short introductory meeting in which U.S. adoptions⁸ of Russian children were discussed.

　　But yesterday, faced with The New York Times' reporting on the purpose of the meeting, he acknowledged he was told the lawyer might have information helpful to the campaign.

　　He said: "The woman stated that she had information that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Ms. Clinton.

　　Her statements were vague, ambiguous and made no sense.

　　It quickly became clear that she had no meaningful information."

　　In an off-camera White House briefing, principal Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders dismissed the controversy⁹.

　　Don Jr. took a very short meeting from which there was absolutely no follow-up. Don Jr. didn't collude with anybody to influence the election.

　　Today, Donald Trump Jr. said: "Obviously, I'm the first person on a campaign to ever take a meeting to hear info about an opponent Went nowhere, but had to listen."

　　He also said he'd cooperate with the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation¹⁰ of Russian meddling in the election.

　　In Moscow, a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin said the Kremlin knew nothing about the lawyer or the meeting.

　　All this comes amid continued confusion over just what came out of the president's meeting with Putin last week at the G20 summit.

　　Administration officials had hailed the creation of a joint¹² cyber-security unit to guard against election hacking¹³.

　　Republican Senator Lindsey Graham called it a dumb idea.

　　To forgive and forget when it comes to Putin regarding cyber-attacks is to empower Putin. And that's exactly what he's doing.

　　Hours after Graham spoke¹¹, the president appeared to reverse course, saying that a U.S.- Russian cyber-security unit can't happen.

　　For the PBS NewsHour, I'm John Yang. undefined

分享到：