Donald Trump panics and unwittingly connects himself to today’s indictments of the Russians

| 8:25 pm EST February 16, 2018
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Donald Trump had a few options today after Special Counsel Robert Mueller obtained indictments against thirteen Russians who conspired to rig the election in Trump’s favor. As he so often tends to do, he tried dishonestly splitting the difference between coming out swinging and hiding under his desk. He posted a single tweet in which he claimed that this vindicated him. But it only took him the one tweet to unwittingly connect himself to today’s indictments.

The indictments reveal that Russia had been plotting to influence the 2016 election since 2014. Trump took that as his cue to declare himself innocent. How could he have been in on the plot to rig the election if the Russians started it in 2014, and he didn’t even decide to run for president until the middle of 2015? Here’s what he tweeted: “Russia started their anti-US campaign in 2014, long before I announced that I would run for President.”

The trouble: this prompted social media users to collectively go digging through Trump’s past tweets, and they found this gem from 2014:

Here we have Donald Trump publicly acknowledging in 2014 that he was considering running for president in the 2016 election. That fits right in with the newly established timeline of Russia having begun its plot to rig the election in 2014. Trump just made himself look more guilty, not less guilty. This tweet only got dug up today because Trump panicked and jumped on the 2014 thing without stopping to think about the ramifications of doing so.