Los Angeles: Hillary Clinton has a hunch about President Donald Trump and his mysterious tweet about "covfefe."
"I thought it was a hidden message to the Russians," the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate quipped Wednesday.
The former first lady and New York senator later turned more serious during an interview at a conference hosted by tech blog Recode.
She suggested that Trump and his allies were using Twitter and other social media to sidetrack Americans' attention from the investigations into the influence of Russia during the presidential campaign or the Republican health care bill. "You can't let Trump and his allies be a diversion. They are a threat," Clinton said at the event near Los Angeles.
"They want to influence your reality," she added. "And that ... is what we're up against and we can't let that go unanswered, whether it's on Twitter, Facebook or anywhere else."
Trump tweeted shortly before 10:30 am IST that "Despite the constant negative press covfefe." The tweet ended there.
Clinton talked at length about Russian involvement in the 2016 contest, referring to US intelligence assessments that Russia not only meddled in the election but did so to help Trump defeat Clinton.
With multiple investigations underway, she asked, "How did they know what messages to deliver? Who told them? Who were they coordinating with, or colluding with?" To pull it off, Russians would have needed to be "guided by Americans," she added later.
In other remarks, she faulted Trump as he seemed close to pulling the United States out of the landmark Paris climate accord.
To back out, she said, would be "throwing out the economic opportunities that being part of the Paris agreement provide for the United States." She called it "totally incomprehensible."
