Donald Trump denies Russia collusion again

“Everything I’ve done is 100 percent proper,” he said at a press conference on Saturday

By Nicole Karlis

Senior Writer

Published January 6, 2018 3:18PM (EST)

 (AP/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
(AP/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Another day, another rebuttal from Donald Trump.

The president refuted denied again that his campaign colluded with Russia during the 2016 election. Politico reports that he was at Camp David meeting with congressional leaders when he spoke out about the matter at a press conference.

“Everything I’ve done is 100 percent proper,” Trump said at the press conference on Saturday. “That is what I do, is I do things proper."

He went on to add, “Just so you understand, there’s been no collusion, there’s been no crime.”

According to the Politico report, when asked about the recent report in the New York Times that alleged that Trump instructed Jeff Sessions not to recuse himself from the Justice Department's investigation, which would be an obstruction of justice, he said that the story was “off.” Trump, according to Politico, didn’t explain why the story was “off” though.

Trump has consistently denied reports that his campaign colluded with Russia. Indeed, on Saturday morning he also called the Russia probe a “total hoax” on Twitter in the middle of a chain of tweets to defend his sanity.

Of course, when asked, Trump is going to deny reports. As Salon writer Lucian K. Truscott IV wrote in November, lying is—and always has been—part of Trump’s strategy.

“It’s a strategy meant to confound and confuse not only with the sheer number of lies, but how they’ve been rolled out. The Trump strategy has been first to lie outright that his campaign had nothing to do with Russians whatsoever. When meetings with Russians were revealed, they explained them away with new lies, that the meetings were routine and didn’t mean anything,” he wrote.

At the same press conference, Trump was asked if he would be open to talking Kim Jong-un, to which he said, "Sure, I always believe in talking.”

It’s an interesting response considering his ongoing threatening tweets about Kim Jong-un. When Trump lashed out at the North Korean leader on Jan. 2, he tweeted: “Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works.”

Those don’t sound like words that would come from someone who claims to believe “in talking” though. Perhaps that was just another one of Trump’s lies.


By Nicole Karlis

Nicole Karlis is a senior writer at Salon, specializing in health and science. Tweet her @nicolekarlis.

MORE FROM Nicole Karlis


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Camp David Donald Trump Russia Probe