NEW YORK, May 30 (APP): US President Donald Trump finally admitted in a tweet that Russia helped elected him before immediately retracting it.
In series of testy tweets , he said he “had nothing to do with Russia helping me to get elected.”
“No, Russia did not help me get elected,” Trump told reporters as he departed Washington for Colorado Springs. “I got me elected.” He spoke less than an hour after his Twitter post.
The original comment, a clause in one of several Twitter posts Thursday, is an extraordinary admission from Trump, who has avoided saying publicly that Russia helped him win the presidency in 2016 through its election interference. American intelligence agencies and federal prosecutors have long concluded that Russia tried to influence voters.
The president’s contradictory statements on Thursday came a day after the US special counsel, Robert Mueller, spoke publicly for the first time about his investigation’s findings. The president and his critics had conflicting interpretations about Mueller’s brief remarks — Trump and his supporters took them to mean “case closed,” while his critics saw them as a call to impeachment.
Speaking to reporters outside the White House and in a subsequent Twitter post, Trump revived personal attacks on Mueller, asserting that the special counsel should never have been chosen for that position — he was “highly conflicted” — and had failed to get the job he really wanted, F.B.I. director, an allegation addressed and countered in Mueller’s final report.
