Updated March 24, 2017 12:20:17

Photo: Donald Trump was sticking to his guns during the TIME interview (Reuters: Carlos Barria)

US President Donald Trump has discussed his relationship with the truth and falsehoods in an interview with TIME magazine, published today.

Mr Trump said he often followed his "gut instinct" during the interview with the magazine's Washington bureau chief, Michael Scherer.

Questioned about his repeated and unverified claims that millions of voters voted illegally in the 2016 election, and that Muslims celebrated on 9/11 in New Jersey, he said: "I'm a very instinctual person, but my instinct turns out to be right."

"Hey, look … I guess I can't be doing so badly because I'm president and you're not."

Mr Trump said he knew he would win last November's election, even though polls were showing his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton would sweep to victory in a landslide.

"When everyone said I wasn't going to win the election, I said well I think I would. And guess what? I won and I won easily."

He also said he was certain that Britain was going to vote to leave the European Union in June last year.

"I predicted Brexit. I said Brexit is going to happen, and everybody laughed, and Brexit happened."

Wiretapping claims: 'It was in quotes'

For the cover story "Is Truth Dead?", the President tried to clarify his accusation that the former President Barack Obama had wiretapped his phones in Trump Tower during the 2016 election campaign.

"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.

Earlier this week, FBI director James Comey dismissed the wiretapping allegation while giving evidence to the House Intelligence Committee.

During the interview, the President referred repeatedly to a news conference earlier this week in which Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said that the communications of Mr Trump and his associates may have been detected after the election by intelligence agencies conducting surveillance of foreign targets.

However, Mr Trump downplayed the critical distinction between his wiretapping claim and the precise type of legal and incidental intercepts that Devin Nunes had referred to.

Ted Cruz and Kennedy's assassin: 'I read it in the paper'

Asked about his campaign claim that Republican rival Ted Cruz's father had met John F Kennedy's assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, Mr Trump said: "Well that was in a newspaper".

"I wasn't, I didn't say that. I was referring to a newspaper. A Ted Cruz article referred to a newspaper story with, had a picture of Ted Cruz, his father, and Lee Harvey Oswald, having breakfast," he said.

The newspaper in question appears to be supermarket tabloid National Enquirer.

Topics: donald-trump, world-politics, united-states

First posted March 24, 2017 11:13:20