President Donald Trump would not rule out firing Special Counsel Robert Mueller or Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, but noted that they were both still working on the Russia investigation.

“They’ve been saying I’m going to get rid of them for the last three months, four months, five months, and they are still here,” Trump said.

The president was asked about the Mueller investigation during his press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the president’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.

“We are hopefully coming to the end,” Trump said optimistically about the ongoing investigation. “It’s a bad thing for our country, very, very bad thing for our country.”

Trump denounced the investigation as a hoax created by Democrats who were frustrated by losing the presidential election, but added that he ordered his lawyers to be “totally transparent.”

He scoffed that the media would never admit that he was being tough on Russia, because it countered their narrative.

Trump said that nobody had been as tough on Russia as he was, citing his decision to build up the military, strengthen NATO, and launch “severe” missile attacks in Syria.

“That’s very sad, but many people died in that fight,” he said about the attacks.