Brooks: ‘Clouds of Behavior’ Make Trump-Russia Collusion Seem ‘More Plausible’

On Friday’s “PBS NewsHour,” New York Times columnist David Brooks stated that he has moved from a 3 to a 5 or 6 on a scale from 1-10 on whether he believes there was collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia because there have been “clouds of behavior that make it seem a little more plausible.”

Brooks said, “I’m sitting out these recent allegations of Michael Cohen, just because I don’t know whether he’s believable. He’s in legal jeopardy. I mean, it just — it’s fishy. I wouldn’t want to like — if you were a journalist, you wouldn’t want to write a story based on — and say that definitely is true.”

Brooks continued, “On the other hand, I’ve been a skeptic of the Russia thing. And so, I’ve had like it from zero to 10, I’ve been a three for a long time, just because I think there was no campaign to collude. So they probably didn’t collude. I have to say, I’m moving up to a five or a six these days, just because there’s been clouds of behavior that does begin to smell pretty fishy. And those are clouds of behavior surrounding whether the Russians actually got analytics from the Democratic computers and handed it to the Trump campaign. Those are weird timings with the Russian assaults connected to Trump tweets and Trump statements. And then, on the obstruction of justice side, what Mueller’s looking over, the tweets, and the whole constellation of things.”

He concluded, “So, again, there’s no one thing where you can say they colluded. That still seems to elude us, but there are clouds of behavior that make it seem a little more plausible.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett