Trump Says Obama, Clinton Jealous Of His Relationship With Putin
Democrats are jealous of the relationship President Donald Trump has with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump told White House reporters Saturday during a press gaggle.
“Democrats wanted to have a good relationship with Putin, but they couldn’t do it because they didn’t have the talent to do it. They didn’t have the chemistry to do it.”
Trump spent a considerable amount of time during the gaggle explaining how he had bonded with Putin in a way that his predecessor Barack Obama and 2016 opponent Hillary Clinton were unable to do.
The president also took a new tack on his approach to the investigation of Russian interfering in the 2016 election, saying that the investigation, which he referred to as a “Democratic hit job,” could end up having an unintended result.
The investigation is “getting in the way of the U. S. establishing a better relationship with Russia, Trump said.
“And that’s a shame because people will die because of it … and it’s a pure hit job.”
Trump found backing for the positions he expressed in the gaggle, but it is unlikely to be the kind of backing that will help him in domestic politics.
RT, the Russian news channel, praised Trump’s efforts to establish a better working relationship with Russia and found an expert to back the president’s statements.
Ray Finch, an MEP from the UK Independence Party, said the Russian “meddling’ investigation only continued because Democrats “refuse to accept the validity of Trump’s presidential victory” and “are using Russia and Putin as a stick with which to beat him.”
Not surprisingly, Vladimir Putin agrees with that assessment. At the APEC summit, Putin said the alleged collusion came as a result of an “American political standoff” and that Trump’s opposition was doing everything it could to damage Trump’s presidency.
Despite the assertions of 17 intelligence agencies that Russia attempted to interfere with the 2016 elections, Trump has yet to say one negative word about Russia or Putin, an approach he continued using during the press gaggle, when he indicated Putin had once again told him he had nothing to do with any attempts to influence the election. Trump told reporters what Putin had said to him about the election.
“Every time he sees me, he says, ‘I didn’t do that.’ And I believe, I really believe, that when he tells me that, he means it.”
Trump’s latest comments against the Russia investigation come at a time when Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation appears to be heating up.
NBC News reported last week that Mueller has enough evidence to indict Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn and Flynn’s son, as a follow-up to the indictments last month of former Trump Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort, Manafort deputy and campaign adviser Rick Gates and foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos.
[Featured Image by Mikhail Klimentyev/AP Images]
