President Donald Trump's comments served as a direct rebuttal to Hillary Clinton's first extensive remarks following her electoral loss in November. | Getty Trump jabs back at Clinton: Comey was 'best thing that ever happened' to her The president says the FBI director 'gave her a free pass for many bad deeds!'



President Trump woke up Tuesday fuming at Democrats and calling for a shutdown of the federal government later this year. He went to bed Tuesday fuming at Hillary Clinton and accusing James Comey, his FBI director, of taking it easy on her -- in another extraordinary 140-character post for the commander-in-chief.

"FBI Director Comey was the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton in that he gave her a free pass for many bad deeds!" Trump tweeted late Tuesday night.


The posts bookmarked a second strange day for Trump and posed a number of questions: If the president accuses the FBI director publicly of letting his vanquished foe off easy, does that require a federal investigation? Was he given any evidence for the claim? What "bad deeds" was the president referring to? Will Comey, who unleashed a fury of criticisms against Clinton while not confirming an investigation into the Trump campaign until after Election Day, fire back?

Comey is scheduled to testify to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.

Trump's comments serve as a direct rebuttal to Clinton's first extensive remarks on the campaign following her electoral loss in November. Speaking at a Women For Women International charity luncheon earlier Tuesday, Clinton attempted to give a full accounting for the reasoning behind her stunning loss.

While she blamed herself and her campaign for the loss, she also heaped blame on Comey. The FBI director criticized Clinton for using a private email server in her basement and storing classified information improperly after a lengthy federal investigation. He later reopened a closed investigation 10 days before Election Day to sift through new emails discovered in a probe of Anthony Weiner, the disgraced congressman and the estranged husband of her top aide, Huma Abedin.

She also blamed Russia. U.S. intelligence agencies say the foreign government was behind email hacks that damaged her campaign, and ties between the country and the Trump campaign are under investigation.

“I was on the way to winning until a combination of Jim Comey’s letter on October 28th and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me but got scared off," Clinton said. "And the evidence for the intervening event is, I think, compelling, persuasive.”

Clinton, in her first extensive interview since the election, seemed to taunt Trump further, noting she won the nation's popular vote by 3 million. Trump has baselessly said millions of people voted fraudulently in a bid to explain why he lost the popular vote — and the issue remains a sore subject, allies and advisers say.

The appearance did something increasingly rare in daytime TV: It knocked the White House press briefing, which Trump watches daily as he eats lunch, off the cable networks. It was also on network TV Tuesday night, which Trump watches with his trusty TiVo as he lives in the residence alone. His advisers have tried to curb his tweeting habits -- particularly while he is watching television — but both posts came during hours not on his official schedule.

The tweets come after a series of questionable interviews Monday for Trump, where he expressed openness to meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, expressed admiration for Philippines strongman Rodrigo Duterte's approval ratings and wondered aloud whether the Civil War — litigated more than 150 years ago over slavery — needed to happen.

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After growing angry Tuesday morning over news coverage of a budget deal his administration struck with Democrats, Trump ordered a full-fledged PR assault Tuesday.

Then, in a Rose Garden appearance to honor the Air Force Academy football team Tuesday afternoon, Trump showed some of his frustrations. He veered into the budget deal, the teetering health care bill and his pledge to build a wall. He wasn't able to win money for the wall in the deal, though he secured more funding for defense spending.

At a rally Saturday night in Pennsylvania, he launched an attack on the "fake news" media and delivered a stinging jeremiad against immigrants, likening them to a sick snake taken in by a woman who eventually bites and kills her. The snake eventually bites and kills her.

In recent weeks, Trump has curbed some of his most explosive Twitter feeds, after a series of early-morning posts where he claimed — without evidence — that President Barack Obama tapped his phones in Trump Tower. The tweets led to widespread ridicule but never an apology from Trump.

It seemed unlikely Trump would have regrets about his late night post Tuesday. Ten minutes after pecking out the first post, he called the investigation into his campaign and Russia "an excuse used by the Democrats as justification for losing the election."

"Perhaps Trump just ran a great campaign?" he said.

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