Evidenced by his Twitter feed, President Donald Trump woke up Thursday morning with Special Counsel Robert Mueller — and his stunning nine-minute press conference — very much on his mind.
In a remarkable development, however, it appears that Trump is publicly admitting, for the first time at least, that Russia interference helped get him elected president, as has been stated repeatedly by numerous U.S. intel and Justice Department investigations, including the office of Special Counsel. That is until he deleted the tweet.
Here are the screenshots of the tweets in which Trump says he “had nothing to do with Russia helping me get elected.”
While Mueller, in his press conference on Wednesday, mostly reiterated much of what was in his 400+ page report into the investigation into Russian interference into the 2016 general election, there were a few eyebrow-raising moments.
Mueller made clear that if he was certain that Trump had not committed crimes, he would have said as much. He also reiterated the gravity of Russia intel efforts to meddle in the democratic process — to hurt Hillary Clinton and help Trump.
By any objective measure, it was not a good day for the president. As such, Trump continued his “best defense is a good offense” tactic by hitting may of the same notes he’s hit before, and dismissing what he sees as a biased and wasteful investigation. Trump first tweeted:
The Greatest Presidential Harassment in history. After spending $40,000,000 over two dark years, with unlimited access, people, resources and cooperation, highly conflicted Robert Mueller would have brought charges, if he had ANYTHING, but there were no charges to bring!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 30, 2019
Given that Mueller’s biggest takeaway was that every citizen should be hyper-aware of just how far Russia meddled in the US election, Trump’s dismissal of Russia is an odd choice.
But the biggest takeaway — and the likely source of cable news fodder for the next day or so — is the Trump’s claim, “And now Russia has disappeared because I had nothing to do with Russia helping me to get elected.”
Trump’s defenders will likely say that this is his standard hyperbolic way of speaking, or that he is mocking the allegation. But there is no denying that this appears to be an admission that he knows Russia helped him get elected president in 2016.
UPDATE 8:35 a.m.: Trump reposted the tweet admitting Russia helped get him elected. He appears to have corrected a typo in the second tweet, changing “acquisition” to “accusation”:
….say he fought back against this phony crime that didn’t exist, this horrendous false accusation, and he shouldn’t fight back, he should just sit back and take it. Could this be Obstruction? No, Mueller didn’t find Obstruction either. Presidential Harassment!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 30, 2019
It’s unclear why he did not delete the admission in his reposted tweets, given he just disavowed it in comments to reporters.
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