BEDMINSTER, N.J. — President Trump unleashed a new fusillade of tweets Sunday morning, defending his son Donald Trump Jr., slashing the news media and tarring his long-vanquished opponent, Hillary Clinton.
After a leisurely Saturday afternoon spent at a women’s golf tournament at his club here, where he waved to the crowd from a glassed-in viewing stand, Trump awoke with a familiar list of grievances.
“Hillary Clinton can illegally get the questions to the debate and delete 33,000 e-mails but my son Don is being scorned by the fake news media?’’ he tweeted shortly before 7 a.m. Forty minutes later, he posted, “With all of its phony unnamed sources and highly slanted and even fraudulent reporting, #fake news is distorting democracy in our country.’’
Trump’s lawyer, Jay Sekulow, insisted Sunday that there was nothing illegal in the meeting Trump Jr. had with a Russian lawyer during last year’s campaign.
Trump Jr.’s willingness to meet with the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, in the expectation of receiving incriminating information about Clinton has raised new questions about possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
The information had been described as ‘‘part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.’’
Sekulow defended Trump and his son in a series of appearances Sunday on five television networks.
‘‘Nothing in that meeting that would have taken place, even if it was about the topic of an opposition research paper from a Russian lawyer, is illegal or a violation of the law,’’ Sekulow said on ‘‘Fox News Sunday,’’ a point he repeated several times. He said the president did not attend the meeting in New York and was not aware of it.
The attorney’s focus on the law appears aimed at moving beyond the shifting accounts of the meeting given by Trump Jr.
At first, the June 2016 meeting was said to be about a Russian adoption program. Then, it was to hear information about Clinton. Finally, Trump Jr. was compelled to release e-mails that revealed he had told an associate that he would ‘‘love’’ Russia’s help in obtaining incriminating information about the Democratic nominee.
The number of people known to be at the meeting also changed over time. As recently as Friday, Rinat Akhmetshin, a Russian-American lobbyist and former Soviet military officer, confirmed his participation to the Associated Press.
In between his Twitter posts Sunday, Trump thanked people who had turned out to cheer him at the US Women’s Open, which is being played at Trump National Golf Club despite calls from women’s groups for it to be moved because of his record of degrading behavior toward women.
A small knot of protesters formed Saturday afternoon as well, but the police kept them well away from the club. “Thank you to all of the supporters, who far out-numbered the protesters, yesterday at the Women’s US Open,’’ Trump wrote. “Very cool!’’
Trump has gone through one of the rockiest stretches of his presidency since the disclosure of the meeting in June 2016 between his son and the Kremlin-linked lawyer.
On Sunday, the top Democrats investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election said that e-mails that Trump Jr. sent about the meeting with the Russian lawyer appeared to confirm that members of the Trump campaign had intended to cooperate with Russian officials.
“This is about as clear of evidence you could find of intent by the campaign to collude with the Russians, to get useful information from the Russians,’’ Representative Adam Schiff of California, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said on ABC’s “This Week.’’
Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he wanted to speak with those who attended the meeting. “You saw not only willingness, but actually glee from the president’s son, as well as involvement of the campaign manager and the president’s son-in-law to say, in effect, yes, bring it on,’’ Warner said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.’’
But the president tweeted his thanks to a former campaign adviser, Michael Caputo, “for saying so powerfully that there was no Russian collusion in our winning campaign.’’
On Friday, Caputo testified before a closed session of the House Intelligence Committee. He emerged to say that he had witnessed no collusion between the campaign and Russia.
There is evidence that the drumbeat of Russia revelations is taking a toll on the president. A poll published Sunday showed Trump’s approval ratings have eroded further in recent weeks, dropping to a level never before seen for a president during his first six months in office.
The Washington Post-ABC News poll said the president’s overall approval rating was 36 percent, down from 42 percent in April. His disapproval rating rose to 58 percent, and 48 percent of those polled said they “disapprove strongly’’ of his performance, citing a loss of US leadership abroad and the Republican health care bill.
The poll brought another broadside from Trump. “The ABC/Washington Post Poll ... was just about the most inaccurate poll around election time!’’ he tweeted.
►President considers shake-up of White House staff. A5
