Putin Trolls America By Trolling Troll He Used To Troll America

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You come to Mother Jones for unique journalism, and we love doing it for you. That's it. That's the upshot of our fall fundraising drive, and we're hoping to raise $250,000 in a shorter than normal three-week window so we can keep right on doing it.

Trump meeting with top Russian officials in the Oval Office on May 10.Alexander Shcherbak/TASS via ZUMA

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Donald Trump may or may not have a recording system in the White House, but Vladimir Putin says he’s willing to provide a record of last week’s meeting between Trump and Russia’s foreign minister:

“If the U.S. administration finds this appropriate, we’re ready to provide a record of the conversation between Lavrov and Trump to the U.S. Senate and Congress,” the Russian president said. The Russian word for “record” can refer to an audio recording, but the Interfax news agency quoted a Kremlin aide, Yuri V. Ushakov, as telling reporters that Moscow had in its possession a written record of the conversation, not a recording.

Officials in Washington have said that Mr. Trump disclosed to Mr. Lavrov highly classified information provided by Israeli intelligence about a planned terrorist operation by the Islamic State extremist group.

Mr. Putin dismissed that claim, saying, “It’s hard to imagine what else these people who generate such nonsense and rubbish can dream up next.”

You have to give Putin credit: he sure knows how to troll us. I can hardly wait for the first Republican in Congress to take him up on his offer.

UPDATE: This was not my original headline. I immediately recognized it as the work of the notorious Ben Dreyfuss, and sure enough, that’s what the evidence of the revision history shows. J’accuse!