February 15, 2017

Trump Blasts Report of “Repeated” Campaign Contact with Russia

The president has an especially bad Twitter meltdown.

Olivier Douliery/DPA/ZUMA

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Update, 2/15/17, 12:25 p.m.: President Trump continued to defend Flynn during Wednesday’s joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying Flynn is a “wonderful man” who has “been treated very, very unfairly by the media, as I call it, the ‘fake media’ in many cases.”

Trump also blasted the leaks from the US intelligence community that forced Flynn’s ouster as National Security Adviser: “From intelligence, papers are being leaked, things are being leaked. It’s criminal action, criminal act, and it’s been going on for a long time, before me, but now it’s really going on. People are trying to cover up for a terrible loss that the Democrats had under Hillary Clinton.”

President Donald Trump angrily repudiated a New York Times report that alleged his aides engaged in “repeated” contact with Russian officials throughout the campaign, taking to his Twitter account on Wednesday to blast the intelligence community for continuing to leak information to the media.

Trump’s denial comes amid the fallout from former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s abrupt resignation on Monday, after it was revealed he misled the administration about his communications to the Russian ambassador. The Washington Post reported last week Flynn discussed easing American sanctions against Russia, contradicting the administration’s previous characterization of the calls as innocent.

In typical Trump fashion, the president on Wednesday thanked Bloomberg View columnist Eli Lake and Fox News for siding with his position on the ongoing leaks.

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From the desk of Mother Jones CEO, Monika Bauerlein...

Newsrooms can be funded in many ways. One of the most controversial (and volatile) ways is by a for-profit corporation or a billionaire owner. We see it across the headlines on a weekly basis: the claw backs in public media, the gutting of The Washington Post, the bending over backwards to appeal to Trump and his allies.

But not here.

When Mother Jones first started publishing 50 years ago, our founders made a critical decision: to be a reader-supported nonprofit. They knew that no corporate owner would be interested in a muckraking newsroom; they also knew that no muckraking newsroom would be interested in following the agenda of a corporate owner.

And so, we’ve been reader-funded for half a century. We rely on contributions from our readers—readers like you—whether it’s $50, or $15 a month, or whatever fits your budget. People give what they can, and every donation makes a difference for our newsroom, which has grown tremendously—in size and reach and renown—since its inception in 1976.

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