Taking his time, Trump responds to Hillary Clinton's comments on the election


It took him a good nine or so hours to react, but President Trump finally responded — in the third person — to comments Hillary Clinton made about the 2016 presidential election on Tuesday afternoon.
At the Women for Women International event in New York, Clinton told the moderator, CNN's Christiane Amanpour, that while she takes "absolute personal responsibility" for her loss, she also believed her campaign's momentum came to a screeching halt when FBI Director James Comey wrote in a letter to Congress on Oct. 28 that the bureau was reopening its investigation into Clinton's use of a private email server. That, and WikiLeaks releasing emails stolen from her campaign chairman, John Podesta, "raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me but got scared off," she said.
Trump does not agree with Clinton's assessment. Shortly before 11 p.m. ET, he tweeted: "FBI Director Comey was the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton in that he gave her a free pass for many bad deeds! The phony…" Trump finished his thought in a second tweet 15 minutes later, switching to the third person: "…Trump/Russia story was an excuse used by the Democrats as justification for losing the election. Perhaps Trump just ran a great campaign?" Perhaps it's just time to go to bed.
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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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