Russia ties all a ‘ hoax,’ Trump tells WV crowd
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — A few hours after news broke Thursday that the special counsel probing possible ties between Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia had impaneled a grand jury, the president strongly counterattacked by calling the allegations a “hoax.”
“The Russia story is a total fabrication” by Democrats, Trump told an enthusiastic crowd of well over 10,000 jammed into Big Sandy
Superstore Arena. “It’s just an excuse for the greatest loss in the history of American politics. It just makes them feel better when they have nothing else to talk about.”
He did not directly address special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, but he ridiculed the notion Russia aided his 2016 victory.
“Most people know there were no Russians in our campaign. There never were. We didn’t win because of Russia — we won because of you,” he said to the audience’s adoring cheers.
“Have you seen any Russians in West Virginia or Ohio or Pennsylvania? Are there any Russians here tonight?”
The whole thing is “demeaning to our country, and demeaning to our Constitution,” the president said.
Much of the event had the feel of a rally from last year’s campaign. The audience even dusted off the old “lock her up!” chant when Trump said Mueller should be looking into Hillary Clinton’s 33,000 deleted emails, her paid Russian speeches and the uranium she put in the hands “of very angry Russians.” (Those issues already have been probed.)
“I just hope the final determination is truly an honest one,” Trump said.
Even daughter-in-law Lara Trump, who introduced the president, sang from the same hymnal. “When you heard the word
let’s keep something in mind here. The same people pushing this crazy story about Russia — and it’s so crazy, you have no idea — are the people who said there was no path to victory for Donald Trump, even up until Election Day, the same people who gave us fake polls the entire election — those are the people pushing that story.”
A couple of Ohioans attending the Trump rally also put little stock into the probe that has dominated Washington for months.
“I think they’ve blown it out of proportion,” said John Hall, a 1995 Ohio State University graduate who works as a financial adviser in Huntington but lives across the Ohio River in Chesapeake. “I think they picked something that’s always happened and made it sound like it never happened before, so they try to create a false narrative.”
Bill Pratt, another OSU grad who is now president of the Lawrence County board of commissioners on Ohio’s southern edge, said, “It’s not a story, in my opinion. It’s just a story the other side has driven and made up. There’s never been any evidence of it.”
Trump won the presidency last year by turning many Midwestern Democrats into supporters, and he got another convert Thursday night.
West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice, a Democrat elected in 2016 despite Trump’s landslide win in the Mountain State, returned to the Republican Party that was his home until 2015.
Justice said “the Democrats walked away from me. … I can’t help you anymore by being a Democrat governor.”
Even though Justice was a Democrat, the coal magnate and Greenbrier resort owner did not back Clinton last year.
Justice’s change of heart gives Republicans 34 governors, compared with 15 for the Democrats and one independent.
The freshly minted Republican also slammed the attention given the TrumpRussia connections.
“Have we not heard enough about the Russians? To our God in Heaven above, the stock market is at 22,000,” Justice said.
Meanwhile, protesters outside the arena chanted “Jim Justice is a traitor.”
Before the rally, several dozen protesters braved a short-but-intense thunderstorm to wave signs at the hundreds waiting to get inside during the driving rain. The messages from the signs ranged from “Tweet Women with Respect” to “Liar Liar” to “Grab Trump by His Putin.”
Hall, the Ohioan who works in West Virginia, said Justice’s conversion is another sign that Democrats who used to dominate the state have abandoned its voters — just like in southeastern Ohio. In contrast, the “blue-collar billionaire” Trump knows how to communicate with them, he said.
“The way he talks to the common man, I think people can relate to him — bricklayers, electricians and the people who build his skyscrapers,” Hall said.
“I think that’s kind of why the working man here can relate. He expresses some of the same frustrations.”