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TRUMP ADMITS, THEN DENIES RUSSIA "HELPING ME TO GET ELECTED"
Less than an hour after he tweeted that Russia helped “me to get elected,” President Trump dismissed the idea to reporters on Thursday.
By Eileen Sullivan
May 30, 2019

WASHINGTON — President Trump on Thursday acknowledged for the first time that Russia helped “me to get elected,” and then quickly retracted the idea.

“No, Russia did not help me get elected,” Mr. Trump told reporters as he departed the White House 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 this morning, is an extraordinary admission from Mr. 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.

Mr. Trump has been reluctant to fully embrace the intelligence agencies’ findings that Russia was behind the 2016 election interference, but he has consistently argued that he alone was responsible for his unexpected victory. The “Russia hoax,” Mr. Trump has argued, is one fabricated by Democrats who are angry they lost the White House.

Mr. Trump’s contradictory statements on Thursday morning arrived a day after the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, spoke publicly for the first time about his investigation’s findings. The president and his critics had conflicting interpretations about Mr. Mueller’s brief remarks — Mr. 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, Mr. Trump revived attacks on Mr. Mueller personally, asserting that the special counsel should never have been chosen for that position and had failed to get the job he really wanted, F.B.I. director, an assertion addressed and refuted in Mr. Mueller’s final report. Mr. Mueller, who had previously served in that role in two administrations, did not go to the White House looking for a job, one of president’s senior advisers, Stephen K. Bannon, told investigators.

“I think Mueller is a true never Trumper,” Mr. Trump said. “He is somebody that dislikes Donald Trump, he’s somebody that didn’t get a job that he requested that he wanted very badly and then he was appointed.”

In other tweets on Thursday morning, Mr. Trump called Mr. Mueller “highly conflicted” and repeated his assertions that the inquiry was a “hoax” and that it amounted to “presidential harassment.”
-newyorktimes.com
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/30/us/politics/trump-russia-help-elected.html