Trump Tells ABC: Sure, I’d Collude Again

WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 12: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the media during a meeting with the President of Poland, Andrzej Duda and his wife Agata Kornhauser-Duda, in the Oval Office the White House on June 12,... WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 12: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the media during a meeting with the President of Poland, Andrzej Duda and his wife Agata Kornhauser-Duda, in the Oval Office the White House on June 12, 2019 in Washington, DC. The two leaders are scheduled to attends meetings at the White House before speaking at a Rose Garden news conference. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images) MORE LESS
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In a new interview released this afternoon by ABC News, President Trump tells George Stephanopoulos that he’d take information from a foreign government if one offered dirt on his 2020 opponent. “I think you might want to listen, there isn’t anything wrong with listening.”

President Trump rejected the idea that such foreign government interventions amounted to election interference. “It’s not an interference, they have information — I think I’d take it. If I thought there was something wrong, I’d go maybe to the FBI — if I thought there was something wrong. But when somebody comes up with oppo research, right, they come up with oppo research, ‘oh let’s call the FBI.’ The FBI doesn’t have enough agents to take care of it. When you go and talk, honestly, to congressman, they all do it, they always have, and that’s the way it is. It’s called oppo research.”

When Stephanopoulos told Trump his own FBI Director, Christopher Wray, said he should contact the FBI if a foreign government approached him with information about a political opponent, Trump said Wray was wrong. “I’ll tell you what, I’ve seen a lot of things over my life. I don’t think in my whole life I’ve ever called the FBI. In my whole life. You don’t call the FBI. You throw somebody out of your office, you do whatever you do,” Trump continued. “Oh, give me a break – life doesn’t work that way.”

See portions of the interview here.

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