Trump says he 'never said Russia did not meddle in the election.' He did.

(Image credit: Mandel Ngan/Getty Images)

published 18 February 2018

President Trump on Twitter Sunday denied questioning whether Russia attempted to meddle in the 2016 election:

However, Trump also said in November of 2017 he is convinced by Russian President Vladimir Putin's denial of election interference. "Every time he sees me, he says, 'I didn't do that,'" Trump said of Putin, "and I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it."

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In other tweets Saturday and Sunday, Trump complained about press coverage of Friday's indictments from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe. He also argued it was Moscow's goal "to create discord, disruption, and chaos within the U.S.," and he pushed back on National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster's Saturday remark that evidence of Russian meddling "is now incontrovertible."

One Sunday tweet on the subject ended on a plaintive note: "But," Trump asked, "wasn't I a great candidate?"

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.