President Donald Trump tossed out bizarre boasts about himself to attack former special counsel Robert Mueller and his Democratic rivals.
Appearing alongside outgoing Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, who announced his resignation Friday, the president took questions from reporters on the White House lawn, where he complained bitterly about the Mueller investigation.
"How many bites of the apple do you get?" Trump complained. "We’ve gone through 500 witnesses, 2,500 subpoenas, I’ve let them interview my lawyers, because I had nothing to do with Russia. Now that’s come out -- there was no collusion. But how many people and how many times, and this has been going on for two-and-a-half years. Rush Limbaugh has said that there is nobody else he knows who could have taken it. On top of taking it, I’ve been a great president."
Trump bragged that he'd accomplished more in his term already than any other president in history, and then lobbed insults against his Democratic challengers and bragged of his relationship with the leader of North Korea.
"China and Russia and, try, North Korea, where I have a relationship," he said. "You don’t have them testing nuclear anymore. Wait, wait. You have a man that was so happy to see me. That’s a good thing, not a bad thing. You have a man that doesn’t smile a lot, but when he saw me, he smiled, he was happy. You have a man, when I came into office, all he was doing before, under Obama, was testing nuclear weapons and blowing up mountains, and now he’s not doing it.
He then veered into another extended attack on Mueller's investigation, insisting that the special counsel found no evidence of coordination with Russia or obstruction of justice, and then defended the embattled Acosta.
"The Democrats aren't working, all they’re doing is trying to hurt people like Alex Acosta," Trump said. "The man who has done — a man who — I have no idea. Are you a Democrat? I have no idea. You know what I know about Alex? He was a great student at Harvard. He is Hispanic, which I so admired because maybe it was a little tougher for him, maybe not. But he did an unbelievable job as the secretary of labor. That’s what I know about him. I know one thing. He did a great job, and until this came up, there was never an ounce of problems with this very good man."
