Donald Trump says 'nyet,' but Russian officials say 'dah dah'!

Donald Trump keeps using those words ...

“I have nothing to do with Russia,” he told reporters on Thursday. “To the best of my knowledge, no person that I deal with does.”

But it’s clear that they do not mean what most people think they mean.

The denial stands at odds with statements by Russian officials, who have at least twice acknowledged contacts with aides to Mr. Trump before the election.

Trump’s statements on his relation to Russia, and to Vladimir Putin, have been nothing if not inconsistent. But now he’s in the almost hilarious position of arguing not just against intelligence reports, not just against his own previous statements, but being contradicted over talks with Russian officials, by Russian officials.

More recently, Russia’s ambassador to Washington, Sergey I. Kislyak, told The Washington Post that he had communicated frequently during the campaign with Michael T. Flynn, a close campaign adviser to Mr. Trump who became the president’s national security adviser before resigning from the position last week.

Note that Kislyak isn’t talking about the conversations he had with Flynn during the transition, which famously including discussions of the sanctions that supposedly led to Flynn’s dismissal. These are talks the two had frequently during the campaign. And it wasn’t just Flynn.