And by the way, I didn’t deal with Russia.
I won because I was a better candidate by a lot.
I won because I campaigned properly and she didn’t.
She campaigned for the popular vote.
I campaigned for the Electoral College.
And you know, it is a totally different thing, Mike.
You know the Electoral College, it’s like a track star.
If you’re going to run the 100-yard dash, you work out differently
than if you’re going to run the 1,000 meters or the mile.
And it’s different.
It’s in golf.
If you have a tournament and you have match play or stroke play,
you prepare differently, believe it or not.
It’s different.
Match play is very different than stroke play.
And you prepare.
So I went to Maine five times, I went to [inaudible], the genius of the Electoral College is that you go to places you might not go to.
And that’s exactly what [inaudible].
Otherwise, I would have gone to New York, California, Texas and Florida.
I can only tell you that there is absolutely no collusion.
Everybody knows it.
And you know who knows it better than anybody?
The Democrats.
They walk around blinking at each other.
But there is tremendous collusion with the Russians and
with the Democratic Party.
Including all of the stuff with the — and then whatever happened
to the Pakistani guy, that had the two, you know, whatever happened
to this Pakistani guy who worked with the D.N.C.?
Whatever happened to them?
With the two servers that they broke up into a million pieces?
Whatever happened to him?
That was a big story.
Now all of sudden [inaudible].
So I know The New York Times is going to — because those are real stories.
Whatever happened to the Hillary Clinton deleted 33,000 emails after she got [inaudible] — which you guys wrote, but then you dropped —
was that you?
For purposes of the Justice Department, I watched Alan Dershowitz
the other day, who by the way, says I, says this is a ridiculous —
He’s been amazing.
And he’s a liberal Democrat.
I don’t know him.
He’s a liberal Democrat.
I watched Alan Dershowitz the other day, he said, No. 1, there is no collusion, No. 2, collusion is not a crime, but even if it was a crime,
there was no collusion.
And he said that very strongly.
He said there was no collusion.
And he has studied this thing very closely.
I’ve seen him a number of times.
There is no collusion, and even if there was, it’s not a crime.
But there’s no collusion.
I don’t even say [inaudible].
I don’t even go that far.
So for the purposes of what’s going on with this phony Russian deal, which, by the way, you’ve heard me say it, is only an excuse for losing an election that they should have won, because it’s very hard for a Republican
to win the Electoral College.
O.K.?
You start off with New York, California and Illinois against you.
That means you have to run the East Coast, which I did, and everything else.
Which I did and then won Wisconsin and Michigan.
[Inaudible.]
So the Democrats.
[Inaudible.]
They thought there was no way for a Republican, not me, a Republican,
to win the Electoral College.
Well, they’re [inaudible].
They made the Russian story up as a hoax, as a ruse, as an excuse for losing an election that in theory Democrats should always win
with the Electoral College.
The Electoral College is so much better suited to the Democrats [inaudible].
But it didn’t work out that way.
And I will tell you they cannot believe that this became a story.
Editor’s Note: This is a found poem taken from Donald Trump’s interview with the New York Times, December 28, 2017.
READ MORE
A Complete Guide to All 17 (Known) Trump and Russia Investigations [WIRED]
Jill Darling is the author of (re)iteration(s), a geography of syntax, Solve For, and begin with may: a series of moments as well as collaborative chapbooks with Laura Wetherington and Hannah Ensor. Critical poetics essays can be found on How2, Something on Paper, The Quint, and Ethos Review, and poetry, fiction, and creative essays in a variety of literary journals. Darling teaches writing at the University of Michigan-Dearborn and lives in Ypsilanti with her partner and dog.
