Trump admits Russia helped install him in the White House in morning meltdown

After two years of calling Russia’s interference in the 2016 election a “hoax,” Trump admitted that Russia helped install him in the White House.

“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,” he tweeted Thursday morning.

The admission came as part of a mini Twitter rant a day after special counsel Robert Mueller gave his first public statement about his investigation, in which he said that his investigation could not and did not exonerate Trump, but confirming that he was forbidden by Justice Department policy from charging Trump.

“And as set forth in the report after that investigation, if we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so,” Mueller said Wednesday.

That statement obviously did not sit well with Trump, who, despite Mueller’s written report saying the same thing, has claimed the report fully exonerated him on all matters of collusion and obstruction.

Since Mueller’s statement, several Democratic lawmakers have joined the growing list of those who say the House should open an impeachment inquiry. Mueller made clear, in both his report and his public statement, that it falls to Congress to take action to address Trump’s crimes.

“The opinion says that the Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing,” Mueller said Wednesday.

None of this — not Mueller’s damning report, not his equally damning statement, and certainly not the increasing calls for Congress to take steps toward impeachment — is putting Trump in a good mood, as his morning meltdown demonstrated.

“So now the Dems and their partner, the Fake News Media, 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,” Trump tweet-whined, again declaring himself the victim of “presidential harassment.”

Trump can recite his standard lies and denials on Twitter all he wants, but as a recent report shows, even that has less impact than it used to. He tweets so much, and so incoherently, that his followers just don’t care as much and don’t even bother engaging at the same rate they once did.

In other words, the more Trump screeches on Twitter, the less people seem to care.

But admitting that Russia did in fact help put him in the White House — something the entire United States intelligence community has been saying since 2016 — might actually get him some more of that attention he so desperately craves.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.