“Bill Clinton stated that I called him after the election. Wrong, he called me (with a very nice congratulations),” Donald Trump said. | AP Photo Trump: I didn't call Bill Clinton — he called me

Donald Trump wants the world to know that it was former President Bill Clinton who called him on the day after the election and not the other way around.

Clinton told the editor of a small weekly newspaper in New York’s Westchester County earlier this month that he had received a call from Trump after the election and that the president-elect had been strangely cordial, “like it was 15 years ago,” when the Clintons used to socialize with Trump.


But Trump took issue with that version of events, writing on Twitter on Tuesday morning that “Bill Clinton stated that I called him after the election. Wrong, he called me (with a very nice congratulations).” Tuesday afternoon, Clinton confirmed via Twitter that it had indeed been him who initiated the phone call with Trump on the day after the election.

In his impromptu interview with the weekly newspaper, Clinton said Trump “doesn’t know much” but that “one thing he does know is how to get angry, white men to vote for him.” The president-elect shot back Tuesday morning at Clinton, borrowing the former president’s own language to write on Twitter that “He ‘doesn't know much,’ especially how to get people, even with an unlimited budget, out to vote in the vital swing states (and more). They focused on wrong states.”

Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.), an early endorser of Trump and his transition team's congressional liaison, said Clinton had invited the president-elect's criticism upon himself by once again raising the issue of Hillary Clinton's popular-vote victory.

"Just yesterday, Bill Clinton, as he was casting his Electoral College vote for his wife, went out again and said, ‘Let's remember Hillary Clinton won the popular vote.’ So Bill Clinton continues to be one of those people who just doesn't want to let go, wants to refer to Donald Trump as the Electoral College president," Collins said on CNN's "New Day" Tuesday morning. "So, you know, I thought that was totally inappropriate by former President Clinton to again kind of gin up the Democrats that to claim Donald Trump is not the legitimate president-elect of the United States."

Trump received 304 Electoral College votes, well above the 270 he needed to clinch a victory. Clinton received 227.

