It’s been a while since Donald Trump said a lot of truly bonkers stuff in public. Even his Twitter feed has been muted by Trump standards. But when Donald Trump is quiet, it doesn’t mean he’s reformed or pivoted or become presidential. It means that at some point he’s going to come out and remind us who he’s been all along. So it was Friday morning when Trump spoke to the press.
Trump repeatedly expressed confidence that Republicans would pass a “monumental” tax bill in which a “tremendous” child tax credit “is increasing on a daily basis.” (Um, no.) But it was predictably on the subject of special counsel Robert Mueller and the Russia investigation that Trump got most worked up:
We're hoping for a very -- let's put it this way: There is absolutely no collusion. That has been proven. When you look at the committees, whether it's the Senate or the House, everybody -- my worst enemies, they walk out, they say, "There is no collusion but we'll continue to look." They're spending millions and millions of dollars.
There is absolutely no collusion. I didn’t make a phone call to Russia. I have nothing to do with Russia. Everybody knows it. That was a Democrat hoax. It was an excuse for losing the election, and it should have never been this way, where they spent all these millions of dollars.
So now even the Democrats admit there's no collusion. There is no collusion -- that's it. And we got to get back to running a country.
Really? Democrats admit there’s no collusion? Because it sure seems like Mueller’s investigation is churning away, flipping and/or indicting former Trump advisers with Russia ties. Why would Democrats conclude there is no collusion while that investigation is ongoing and so very active?
Also, it’s always rich to hear a Republican complain about the money being spent on an investigation into the subversion of our democracy after the millions they poured into investigating Benghazi. Trump quickly pivoted to attacking Hillary Clinton, claiming that “they found tremendous things on the other side” and “there's never been anything like it in this country that we've ever found before.” But it wasn’t even clear exactly what he was claiming was so tremendous and unprecedented.
The capper to the press availability was the best, though. Asked whether he planned to pardon former national security adviser Michael Flynn, Trump said “I don't want to talk about pardons for Michael Flynn yet. We’ll see what happens.” YET. And is anyone else thinking that that “we’ll see what happens” really means “we’ll see how thoroughly Flynn has flipped on me”?