President-elect Donald Trump unleashed a tweetstorm Sunday about plans by Hillary Clinton’s campaign to join in the election recount in Wisconsin initiated by Green Party candidate Jill Stein.

His sentiments were soon echoed by Kellyanne Conway, his senior adviser and former campaign manager, who went so far as to criticize the Clinton campaign for making the decision after Trump had been “magnanimous” in backing off his promise to prosecute the former secretary of state – even though the two issues are unrelated.

Trump had already begun sounding off against the recount efforts late Saturday, when he called them a “scam” by the Green Party to “fill up their coffers.” He also criticized the Democrats for joining the effort.

Trump resumed his criticism Sunday, saying that Clinton had conceded the election in her phone call to him before his victory speech Nov. 9 and that nothing would change.

Trump then spent five tweets quoting parts of Clinton’s responses at the third presidential debate, during which she blasted Trump for telling moderator Chris Wallace that he would “keep you in suspense” rather than outright promise to accept the election results.

At the debate, Clinton had called Trump’s answer “horrifying” and “a direct threat to our democracy.”

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Trump’s tweets:

For the record, Trump’s tweets capture the essence of Clinton’s debate responses but do not quote the full exchange faithfully.

Trump capped it all off by quoting Clinton’s concession speech and then his signature adjective: “So much time and money will be spent – same result! Sad”

On the Sunday political-show circuit, Conway also derided plans by Clinton’s campaign to participate in an election recount effort.

On “State of the Union,” Conway said Trump was not focused on prosecuting Clinton but wouldn’t rule it out – which she said indicated that Trump was being “incredibly gracious and magnanimous” to Clinton.

Though the two issues are neither related nor causal, Conway tried to link Trump’s latest public comments about not pursuing a prosecution of Clinton to the Clinton campaign’s decision to join the recount effort.

“But this is how the president-elect feels at this moment about Hillary Clinton,” Conway said. “I would say, in response that, I guess her attitude toward that is to have her counsel, Mark Elias, go and join this ridiculously fantastical recount that Jill Stein is engaging in Wisconsin and perhaps elsewhere. So you’ve got the President-elect Donald Trump being quite magnanimous to Hillary Clinton and you’ve got her responding with joining into this recount.”

Conway said that she was confident the recount would not change the election results in Wisconsin, where Stein received 33,000 votes.


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