Trump: It's OK to collude with Russia because I just had dinner with the queen of England

In a Thursday morning Twitter meltdown, Trump doubled down on his position that he would absolutely collude with foreign adversaries for political gain in the future.

“I meet and talk to ‘foreign governments’ every day. I just met with the Queen of England (U.K.), the Prince of Whales [sic], the P.M. of the United Kingdom, the P.M. of Ireland, the President of France and the President of Poland. We talked about ‘Everything!'” Trump wrote, before deleting the tweet and reposting it with “Wales” spelled correctly.

“Should I immediately call the FBI about these calls and meetings? How ridiculous! I would never be trusted again. With that being said, my full answer is rarely played by the Fake News Media. They purposely leave out the part that matters,” Trump concluded.

Trump is trying to defend himself after video aired of him telling ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that he would not contact the FBI if a foreign government offered him dirt on political opponents.

“It’s not an interference, they have information — I think I’d take it,” Trump said in response to a question about whether he would accept information from adversaries like Russia or China. Trump went on to say that the FBI does not have enough resources to deal with campaigns alerting them when foreign governments try to illegally influence American elections.

“If I thought there was something wrong, I’d go maybe to the FBI — if I thought there was something wrong,” Trump said.

With these comments, Trump was essentially inviting foreign governments to seek to influence him by providing dirt on his opponents.

And in his Thursday morning tweets, Trump absurdly tried to claim that these nefarious actions would be no different from normal diplomatic relations like meeting with the queen on a state visit to the U.K.

The invitation to foreign governments to interfere in elections on Trump’s behalf drew immediate and widespread outrage.

“‘Unfit to be President’ is a gross understatement,” former CIA chief John Brennan wrote on Twitter. Trump “is undeserving of any public office, and all Americans should be outraged,” he added.

Even Trump’s most loyal sycophants on “Fox and Friends” attacked him on Thursday morning for inviting help from foreign adversaries.

In the 2016 campaign, Trump begged Russia to help his campaign by hacking into his opponent’s emails. Hours later, Russian operatives began trying to illegally access the email accounts of Hillary Clinton and high-level staffers on her campaign.

The Mueller report lays out numerous instances of Trump campaign officials chatting with Russian actors and welcoming any dirt they may have had on Clinton. Trump later lied about one of those meeting, which took place in Trump Tower in New York, the same building as Trump’s campaign headquarters.

In the end, Trump is willing to put his own personal ambitions over the law and fair democratic elections. He wanted foreign interference in 2016, and is asking for it again in 2020.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.