President Trump took aim at Democrats over their obsession with what he called “the totally made up Russia story” Thursday, telling a rambunctious crowd in West Virginia that the hubbub is merely an “excuse for the greatest loss in the history of American politics.”
“Have you seen any Russians in West Virginia or Ohio or Pennsylvania?” he asked the crowd in Huntington, West Virginia. “Are there any Russians here tonight? They can’t beat us at the voting booths so they are trying to cheat you out of the future and the future you want.”
Trump’s remarks came hours after news broke that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has reportedly been using a federal grand jury to assist his investigation into alleged Russian election interference.
But Trump dismissed the controversy as a “total fabrication” and pointed the finger of blame at Hillary Clinton and the Democrats, who have frequently hyped the controversy as a way of explaining away their upset loss in November.
“The reason why Democrats talk about the totally made up Russia story is because they have no message, no agenda, and no vision,” he said. “The Russia story is a total fabrication, it’s just an excuse for the greatest loss in the history of American politics. It just makes them feel better when they have nothing else to talk about.”
He then grilled Hillary Clinton for the various Russian ties she had, and the controversies that plagued her doomed campaign.
“What the prosecutors should be looking at are Hillary Clinton’s 33,000 deleted emails, and they should be looking at the paid Russian speeches, and the owned Russian companies — or let them look at the uranium she sold that is now in the hands of very angry Russians,” he said to cheers of “lock her up” from the enthusiastic crowd.
Clinton has written a 500+ page book on the subject of her defeat, to be released in September called What Happened, in which she is expected to continue her push to blame her loss partly on Russia.
But Trump called the efforts to talk away his victory “demeaning” to the American people and argued instead that he won due to the millions of people who voted for him in states such as West Virginia, where he won by 42 points.
“Most people know there were no Russians in our campaign, there never were, we won because of you,” he said. “We won because we totally outworked the other side, we won because millions of patriotic Americans voted to take back their country.”
However, in the spirit of bipartisanship, the president did have some advice for Democrats on the best tactic to win elections:
“Try winning at the voting booth,” he said. “Not going to be easy, but that’s the way you’re supposed to do it.”
Adam Shaw is a Breitbart News politics reporter based in New York. Follow Adam on Twitter: @AdamShawNY
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