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| President Trump |
By Dylan Stableford
President Trump followed up Saturday’s Twitter tirade with a
pair of tweets on Sunday, saying that it is “very sad” Republicans are doing
“very little to protect” him, and admitted that the investigation into his
campaign’s possible contacts with Russia, while “phony,” is “taking hold.”
Earlier Sunday, Anthony Scaramucci, Trump’s new
communications director, said despite the conclusions of U.S. intelligence
agencies, including his own directors of national intelligence, national
security and the FBI, the president is still not sure Russia interfered in the
2016 presidential election.
“There’s a lot of disinformation out there,” Scaramucci told
CNN’s Jake Tapper when asked whether Trump was prepared to sign a bipartisan
bill slapping new sanctions on Russia to punish Moscow over its meddling in the
election.
“Somebody said to me the other day, I don’t want to say who,
if the Russians actually hacked this situation and spilled out those emails,
you would have never seen it,” he continued. “You would have never had any
evidence of them. Meaning that they’re super confident in their deception
skills and hacking.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Tapper interjected. “You’re making a lot
of assertions here. I don’t know who this anonymous person is that said if the
Russians had actually done it we wouldn’t have been able to detect it.”
“How about it’s the president, Jake,” Scaramucci said. “He
called me from Air Force One and basically said to me, ‘This is, maybe they did
it, maybe they didn’t do it.’”
On Saturday morning, Trump lashed out on Twitter at multiple
targets, including Obamacare, Hillary Clinton, two newspapers, his own
administration and the investigation into whether his campaign colluded with
Russia to influence the 2016 election.
Trump also announced that “all agree” that the president has
“the complete power to pardon.”
But Scaramucci insisted on Sunday that the president “isn’t
thinking about pardoning” anyone.”
“The Russian thing is a nonsensical thing,” Scaramucci said.
“I was there early on in the campaign. I didn’t have any interactivity with the
Russians. I didn’t see anybody have any interactivity with Russians. It is a
complete bogus and nonsensical thing … You guys have to manufacture these
scandals to take the president off of his agenda. We are going to put the
president right back on his agenda.”
The Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia, including Donald
Trump Jr.’s controversial pre-election meeting with a Kremlin-connected lawyer,
are the subject of an FBI investigation and two separate congressional probes.
“None of that is being manufactured,” Tapper told
Scaramucci. “None.”
Meanwhile, Scaramucci, who was named communications director
Friday, said he plans to meet his staff on Monday to discuss leaks - something
Trump has often railed against in response to the explosive stories that come
from them.
“Tomorrow, I’m going to be having a meeting with the
communications staff and say, ‘Hey, I don’t like these leaks,'” Scaramucci
said. “‘And so we’re going to stop the leaks. And if we don’t stop the leaks,
I’m gonna stop you. It’s just really that simple.'”
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