Early Addition: Trump Admits Russia Helped 'Me To Get Elected'

<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/samsebeskazal/47959855777/in/pool-gothamist/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">dennis fraevich's flickr</a>

• Follow Gothamist on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and like us on Facebook. You can also get the top stories mailed to you—sign up here.
• Trump finally acknowledged that Russia helped him get elected ("I had nothing to do with Russia helping me to get elected") in a tweet this morning, only to contradict the tweet (which hasn't been deleted yet!) and deny they helped him, because Trump has the biggest galaxy brain of them all.
• It costs three times more to build a subway station in New York than London or Paris: "People will say to me, ‘Why are MTA construction costs so high?’ And the answer is ‘Everything.’ Every factor you look at is flawed the way the MTA does business, from the first step to the end,” one expert told NY Magazine.
• Here's a delightful profile on A$AP Eva, a Chinatown shopowner who's become famous for outfitting hip hop legends.
• This man with a giant Jar Jar Binks tattoo that covers his entire back is my new hero: "For the record - I don’t live with my parents. I am married. I have had sex (multiple times). I have friends. I have a job. I do go outside. I know that Star Wars isn’t real. They are just movies."
• The Wall Street Journal reports that the White House wanted the USS John McCain “out of sight” for Trump’s visit to Japan. So a tarp was hung over the ship’s name ahead of the trip, and sailors—who wear caps bearing the ship’s name—were given the day off for Trump’s visit.
• Tom Petty‘s family is at war after his eldest daughter allegedly planned to cash in on her late father’s edgy legacy by “selling out” and creating a Paul Newman-style range of Tom Petty salad dressings and other cheesy supermarket products.
• Listen to five more new songs from Bill Callahan's beautiful upcoming album Shepherd In A Sheepskin Vest.
• Check out "A People Map of the US," where city names are replaced by their most Wikipedia’ed resident: people born in, lived in, or connected to a place.
• Secret recordings from a NY Times investigation captured physicians’ concerns that more children seemed to fare poorly after heart surgery—but their hospital kept doing the operations anyway.
• The BBC takes a look at preachers who are getting rich off of poor Americans.
• The Daily Beast has piqued my interest in the new film Ma by saying it "is so aggressively terrible, random, and wild that the only recourse is to convince yourself you’re watching high art."
• After human traffic jams at the top of Mount Everest led to multiple deaths, Nepalese officials said that they were considering changing the rules about who was allowed up the world’s highest mountain.
• And finally, the sleepiest tug of war: