President Trump has avoided giving interviews for almost a month, but he broke that streak by speaking to Fox & Friends this Friday. During the interview, Trump reaffirmed his admission that he purposely led the public to believe that he had secret recordings of his conversations with former FBI Director James Comey.
According to Trump, his infamous tweet where he said Comey “better hope” there are no “tapes” of their conversations was a tactic to intimidate Comey into submission.
“When he found out that there may be tapes out there — whether it’s governmental tapes or anything else, and who knows — I think his story may have changed,” Trump said. “You’ll have to take a look at that because then he has to tell what actually took place at the events. And my story didn’t change — my story was always a straight story, my story always was the truth. But you’ll have to determine for yourself whether or not his story changed, but I did not tape.”
Then in a jaw-dropping moment, Fox host Ainsley Earhardt praised Trump for using such “smart” tactics.
“It was a smart way to make sure he stayed honest during those hearings,” Earhardt said.
“It wasn’t very stupid, I can tell you that,” Trump agreed. “He did admit that what I said was right. And if you look further back before he heard about [the ‘tapes’ claim ], I think maybe he wasn’t admitting that. So you’ll have to do a little investigative reporting to determine that, but I don’t think it’ll be that hard.”
So let’s review what just happened here: The President of the United States just admitted that he intentionally led the country on a wild goose chase in order to manipulate an investigation into his presidential campaign.
Watch the video below:
.@POTUS on why he wanted former FBI Dir. James Comey to believe there were tapes of their conversations pic.twitter.com/pCuibM5Z6k
— FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) June 23, 2017
[H/T ThinkProgress] Featured image via screen grab
