When asked about whether he's decided against firing special counsel Robert Mueller, President Donald Trump again insisted there was "no collusion" with the Russians, claimed Democrats were the ones to actually work with the Kremlin and took a shot at the FBI.
"Have you concluded that it's not worth the political fallout to remove either special counsel Mueller or Deputy Attorney General [Rod] Rosenstein?" Bloomberg's Jennifer Jacobs asked the president during his joint press conference with Japanese President Shinzo Abe.
"I can say there was no collusion and that's been so found, as you know, by the House Intelligence Committee," Trump responded, citing the recent closure of the Republican-led committee's Russia investigation. "There is no collusion. There is no collusion with Russia other than by the Democrats, or, as I call them, the obstructionists. They truly are obstructionist."
The president then switched gears to reiterate his belief that the Russia investigation is a "hoax," claiming that it was "created largely by the Democrats as a way of softening the blow of a loss which is a loss that frankly they shouldn't have had from the standpoint that it's very easy for them to have a tremendous advantage in the electoral college."
"You look at the kind of money that was paid, probably some went to Russia," he continued. "You look at [Obama White House adviser] John Podesta having a company in Russia where nothing happened and people don't talk about it. You look at the fact that their server, the DNC server, was never gotten by the FBI."
In what appears to be a reference to the recent raid on his longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen, the president wondered why the FBI didn't take the DNC server because they "take what they want."
"They wouldn't get the server," he said. "This is a hoax."
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