So I’ve been really trying to process how Trump plays to this Russia backlash.  Obviously it’s a big deal when even some of his most ardent supporters are really turned off by his rhetoric.  And publicly siding with Russia regarding the election meddling was kind of a shocker.  GOP stalwarts were essentially calling his behavior treasonous.  It was bad.  So when he walked back his statements the next day only by suggesting that when he said “would” instead of “wouldn’t” when saying he didn’t know why it would be Russia who interfered, it was a total slip of the tongue…well I expected such a blatant lie not to work as well as it did.  I mean it wasn’t just one switch up of “would” and “wouldn’t”.  He went on several diatribes on Monday, both in his initial statement, in his Hannity Interview and his Tucker Carlson interview, shoring up the position that he didn’t have faith in his intelligence community, that he thinks Putin is great, and that Putin’s word holds more water.  The idea that he could simply claim this was a slip of the tongue issue is a lie, for no other reason than that it literally contradicts 24 hours of statements to the contrary.  Yet, GOP congressmen, apologist pundits, and generally everyone who had this moment of clarity regarding who Trump is, immediately seemed to say “That makes sense” and went back to calling the liberals a bunch of liars distorting the truth.  And the world around us all collectively sighed…