Trump and Lavrov had a reunion.

Donald Trump held a closed-door meeting with the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, at the White House on Tuesday, but the two men gave diverging accounts of what was discussed, on a day articles of impeachment were announced against the US president.

Maddow pointed out the scorching ironies of having a closed-door meeting with Lavrov of all people on the day articles of impeachment were announced. Last time Trump met privately with Lavrov was that time he blabbed top security secrets to Lavrov and Kisliyak. The secrets were so top and Trump’s blabbing them was so horrifying that the US intel people were forced to extract their best source from Russia. What does that mean? It means that source is not there any more, so we miss the crucial information about Putin the source had been providing. The source could take photos of what was on Putin’s desk; that’s how high up the source was.

The last time Lavrov visited the White House, in May 2017, Trump was reported to have disclosed highly classified information to him about US intelligence-sharing arrangements.

On this occasion, the press were barred from the meeting, and were handed a White House statement saying, that among other topics: “President Trump warned against any Russian attempts to interfere in United States elections.”

Asked about the statement at a press conference in the Russian embassy later the same afternoon, Lavrov claimed: “No we haven’t even actually discussed elections.”

And even if we believed that Trump did say that – which we don’t – would we believe Lavrov would believe he meant it? Of course not.