President Trump said he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin is “very insulted” over the question of whether Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
The two world leaders had “two or three very short conversations” at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Vietnam, Trump told reporters Saturday on Air Force One, according to a press pool report.
On the issue of Russian meddling, Trump said he again asked Putin about it, who he added then denied it.
“He said he didn’t meddle, he said he didn’t meddle. I asked him again. You can only ask so many times,” Trump said. Asked if Putin denied it “today,” Trump added: “I just asked him again. He said he absolutely did not meddle in our election, he did not do what they are saying he did.”
Trump’s talk of Putin’s denials stands in contrast to the conclusion of multiple U.S. intelligence agencies in January that Russia was behind the hacking of emails of the Democratic National Committee and officials involved in Hillary Clinton’s campaign. There are now a number of investigations, one federal probe headed by special counsel Robert Mueller and a handful of others in Congress, looking into Russian interference and whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin.
“I think he is very insulted by it, which is not a good thing for our country,” Trump said. The president said “I really believe” when Putin says he was not involved. He also called former FBI Director James Comey and some of his intelligence community colleagues “political hacks.”
Trump asserted that the U.S. would benefit in having an ally in Russia on issues like North Korean belligerence and China’s role in the matter. He also said a joint statement with Putin on Syria, where there has been a civil war going on for more than six years, will be released and that he thinks “people are going to be extremely happy with it and also very impressed with it.”
Putin also spoke to reporters on the U.S.-Russia relationship as Trump was departing Da Nang on Saturday, CNN reported.
“The relations between Russia and the US have not come out of the crisis state yet,” Putin said. “As you know, and I often talk about it, we are prepared to turn the page and go forward to look into the future to solve the problems that are of interest to people of the United States and people of the Russian Federation.”
Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov also denied to CNN that as far as he knew, Putin and Trump did not discuss Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
Trump had his first face-to-face encounter with Putin at the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, in July, where he was said to also have brought up election interference.
