US President Donald Trump defended his controversial statements he has made on wiretapping, voter fraud and Brexit, claiming he has ultimately been proven right time and time again.
"I'm a very instinctual person, but my instinct turns out to be right. I tend to be right. I'm an instinctual person, I happen to be a person that knows how life works," Trump said in his interview with Time magazine yesterday.
On his claim that people voted illegally in the presidential elections, he said, "Well I think I will be proved right about that too. We'll see after the committee."
"When everyone said I wasn't going to win the election, I said well I think I would. You know it is interesting, somebody came up to me and said the other day, the New York Times and other people, you know other groups, had you down at one per cent, well, I said no I think I am going to win, and people smiled.
"Brexit, I predicted Brexit, you remember that, the day before the event. I said, no, Brexit is going to happen, and everybody laughed, and Brexit happened. Many many things. They turn out to be right," he said.
British Prime Minister Theresa May will trigger on March 29 the two years of complex negotiations over the UK's exit from the European Union.
Britain voted 51.9 per cent to 48.1 per cent in favour of Brexit in a referendum on June 23, 2016.
Trump also pointed to a news conference by Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, in which the congressman said communications of Trump and associates may have been picked up after the election by intelligence agencies conducting surveillance of foreign targets.
Time magazine noted in the interview that traditionally people in Trump's position in the Oval Office have not said things unless they can verify they are true.
Time questioned him about the wiretapping hearing this week in which FBI Director James Comey and National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers testified about his tweets and whether Comey's testimony in any way takes away from the credibility of the tweets he put out accusing the Obama administration of wiretapping him. It also questioned him about his claims that three million undocumented people voted in the election.
"Now remember this. When I said wiretapping, it was in quotes. Because a wiretapping is, you know today it is different than wire tapping. It is just a good description. But wiretapping was in quotes. What I'm talking about is surveillance," he said.
"I have articles saying it happened... And the New York Times had a front-page story, which they actually reduced, they took it, they took it the word wiretapping out of the title, but its first story in the front page of the paper was wiretapping," he said.
"Well I don't know where these wiretaps came from. They came from someplace. That is what they should find out. And you know the real story here is about the leakers. OK? You don't write about that. To me... That's the story, these leakers, they are disgusting. These are horrible people," he said.
"That's the story," Trump said as the interview ended. "Hey look, in the meantime, I guess, I can't be doing so badly, because I'm president, and you're not. You know.
