Believe he did mean it literally. He gave Slime Magazine ("time") a WH tour on May 8, 2017. It was published as "President Trump After Hours". Pic related excerpt.
The 12 "Russians" must have been working for Jugears' DHS because it was DHS who got caught messing with Indiana's, Georgia's and many other states' systems. DHS blamed a Microsoft excel gliche. Of course no corrupt msm would mention this.
https://dailycaller.com/2017/05/11/the-other-much-worse-hacking-story/
>What’s more, the hacking attempts occurred on key election dates and also happened to coincide with Kemp’s public statements pushing back against a DHS plan to designate state election systems “critical infrastructure.” That new designation would allow federal intrusion into state election systems because the federal agency would be allowed to provide “extra security” to those systems, opening them up to federal oversight.
>Most damning? The cybersecurity firm discovered the hacking attempt originated not from some foreign country far away but from a workstation located under the umbrella of DHS—on Capitol Hill, in Southwest Washington, DC, in an office affiliated with then-President Barack Obama’s DHS, under former Secretary Jeh Johnson. Federal agencies were not allowed to access state databases at the time without permission from the state. DHS Secretary Johnson was hoping to change all that with his new “critical infrastructure” classification.