Trump Claims His ‘Greatest Achievement’ Is Exposing Corruption of All His Enemies in Crazed Rant

Trump Claims His ‘Greatest Achievement’ Is Exposing Corruption of All His Enemies in Crazed Rant

In what can only be described as an insane, rambling, fact-free rant to a gaggle of reporters just outside the White House on Thursday morning, President Trump proclaimed that exposing the “corruption” of his perceived enemies would be one of his “greatest acheivements.”

The president was apparently trying to clean up an early-morning tweet in which he said that Russia “had nothing to do” with helping his election victory. This was the first time he had acknowledged at all that Russia had even meddled in the 2016 election with the intent of helping him win:

Trump then went on to complain that the real collusion was between Hillary Clinton, Russia and the news media. All Trump had done, in his mind, was fight back against what he called a “hoax.” And in what passes for his mind, he is winning the fight: “I think in the end I will consider what’s happening now to be one of my greatest achievements, exposing this corruption.”

The president went on to call impeachment “a dirty, filthy, disgusting word” and parsing the phrase “high crimes and misdemeanors” from Section 4, Article II of the Constitution: “High crimes and — not with or or — it’s high crimes and misdemeanors, there was no high crime and no misdemeanor.”

The entire phrase actually reads that the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” It was a common legal phrase at the time the Constitution was written, and a general one that encompasses a wide range of offenses. Congress does not need crimes characterized as one to file impeachment charges for the other.

Then he returned to his original theme: “I hope it goes down as one of my greatest achievements because I’ve exposed corruption — I’ve exposed corruption like nobody knew existed.”

This corruption mostly exists in the right-wing media bubble of Fox News’ primetime and early-morning shows, so the casual viewer of the president’s rant could be forgiven for having no idea what he’s talking about. Neither does he.

Watch the video up top, via CNN.

Gary Legum

Gary Legum has written about politics and culture for Independent Journal Review, Salon, The Daily Beast, Wonkette, AlterNet and McSweeney's, among others. He currently lives in his native state of Virginia.

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