On Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta engaged in a long, painstaking fact-check of what he called President Donald Trump’s “firehose of falsehoods” about Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

“An angry President Trump gave already exhausted fact checkers quite a workout today,” Acosta said about an impromptu press gaggle Trump held at the White House before flying off to give the commencement speech at the Air Force Academy. The president, Acosta noted, was clearly upset by Robert Mueller’s comments the day before in which the former FBI director appeared to go out of his way to avoid saying Trump did not commit any crimes.

“Mr. Trump fired back,” Acosta said, “but much of what the president said wasn’t true.”

Then CNN aired several clips of Trump making a number inaccurate and insulting assertions.

“I think Mueller is a true never Trumper. He’s somebody that dislikes Donald Trump,” Trump claimed.

Acosta pointed out that Trump’s own former White House chief strategist, Steve Bannon, called that assertion “ridiculous” to Special Counsel investigators. “The president also said Mueller wanted the position of FBI director, but that’s not true either, according to White House aides who said Mueller did not come in looking for the position.”

Trump also repeated one of his favorite talking points about the Mueller probe: “Despite $40 million, 18 Trump haters, including people that worked for Hillary Clinton and some of the worst human beings on Earth, they got nothing.”

Acosta, bringing more facts: “The latest estimated cost of the Mueller report and Russia investigation is $25 million not $40 million.”

Then, attempting to clean up his own startling admission on Twitter from earlier in the day, Trump vehemently denied that Russia helped him get elected in 2016. “Russia didn’t help me at all. Russia, if anything, I think helped the other side,” Trump said angrily. “You know who got me elected? I got me elected.”

In this case, Trump on Twitter was right, while Trump on the White House lawn was not, Acosta pointed out. “Here’s the reality. A 2017 U.S. Intelligence community report stated ‘We further assess Putin and the Russian government developed a clear preference for President-Elect Trump’ and then there’s the president’s personal call for Russian assistance during the campaign.”

Watch the video above, via CNN.

from Mediaite http://bit.ly/2XgfClu