Former Trump adviser Caputo: Trump Jr. ‘made a mistake’ with meeting

In a special segment on “Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly,” NBC News’s Katy Tur reported on the meeting Donald Trump Jr. and other members of President Trump’s team had during the presidential campaign with a Russian lawyer promising dirt on Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

“Donald Jr. made a mistake,” former Trump adviser Michael Caputo said, “and he’d do it entirely differently if he had an opportunity.”

Asked if the meeting should have raised red flags, given that Russian government connections were implied in the emails setting it up, Caputo said: “For an experienced campaign operative? Yeah, it should have raised a red flag. For a family member, for a first-time candidate for president of the United States in a whirlwind like we were in? I’m not surprised.”

{mosads}He said it wasn’t unusual for members of the campaign to have unplanned meetings, saying, “The place was pell-mell.”

Instead of showing evidence of collusion between Trump campaign officials and Russia, Caputo said Trump Jr.’s involvement “shows more the naiveté of his first experience in a political campaign.”

CIA veteran John Sipher, who was once posted in Moscow, told Tur the meeting dangling information about Clinton was “like human fishing. They’re putting bait out there to see if you’re willing to swallow it. And [the] Trump campaign team swallowed it whole.”

Caputo defended the Trump campaign against allegations of collusion with Russia, saying, “The Donald Trump campaign had nothing to do with Russia.

“There was no collusion. Do you think that place was organized enough to collude with the lunch counter across the street? It just wasn’t.”