President Donald Trump was on one this morning as he finally admitted that Russia’s work helped him win the White House. But after realizing that he’d let the truth slip out, Tiny Twitter Fingers immediately moonwalked that statement back.
On Thursday morning, Trump (presumably tweeting from the Iron Throne, which is what he makes his aides call his bathroom) went on a full tweet-storm, claiming he “had nothing to do with Russia helping me to get elected.”
From the Daily Beast:
With reporters jumping on the fresh admission as Trump appeared on the White House lawn almost immediately afterward, the president contradicted himself, saying: “Russia did not help me get elected...Russia didn’t help me at all.”
The Twitter rant came a day after the special counsel appeared to encourage Congress to begin impeachment proceedings against him.
Trump has repeatedly denied that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, ignoring overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Most memorably, he sided with Vladimir Putin over his own intelligence services when the two held a press conference together in Helsinki in June 2018.
Standing next to the Russian president and asked if he’d rebuked Putin over the interference, Trump said: “I have President Putin, he just said it’s not Russia. I will say this, I don’t see any reason why it would be. I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today.”
On Thursday morning, the clearly irritated president wrote: “Russia, Russia, Russia! That’s all you heard at the beginning of this Witch Hunt Hoax...And now Russia has disappeared because I had nothing to do with Russia helping me to get elected. It was a crime that didn’t exist.”
Minutes later, Trump told reporters on the White House lawn, “You know who got me elected? I got me elected,” he said. “Russia didn’t help me at all. Russia, if anything, I think, helped the other side.”
And it’s true; according to Trump’s favorite magazine, “Russian Prostitute Times,” he voted for himself 62,980,160 times—which was still some three million votes less than Hillary Clinton.
Despite several meetings and phone calls with Russian President and U.S. Vice President Vladimir Putin, Trump has repeatedly denied Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election, despite U.S. intelligence findings to the contrary.
Shortly after Trump Cashapp’d Russia the final payment for the White House, Trump told Time magazine he didn’t believe Russia interfered with the election. “That became a laughing point, not a talking point, a laughing point.”
After another meeting with Putin in November 2017, Trump said, “Every time [Putin] sees me, he says, ‘I didn’t do that.’ And I believe—I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it. But he says, ‘I didn’t do that.’ I think he’s very insulted by it, if you want to know the truth. Don’t forget, all he said is he never did that, he didn’t do that. I think he’s very insulted by it, which is not a good thing for our country.”
On Wednesday, during his “I said what I said” tour, special counsel Robert Mueller acknowledged again that Russia did interfere in the 2016 election, noting that “There were multiple, systematic efforts to interfere in our election. That allegation deserves the attention of every American,” the Daily Beast reports.
Trump reportedly doesn’t give a shit what Mueller says because he didn’t charge him and for Trump, that means full exoneration and no obstruction. I’ve used this defense before when I was riding a razor-thin line between a D and an F in a class and the teacher listed 900 things I could do to bring my grade up and all I heard was that I was passing.