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Version 1 Version 2
‘Time to Move Forward,’ Trump Says After Putin Denies Election Hacking ‘Time to Move Forward’ on Russia, Trump Says, as Criticism Intensifies
(about 9 hours later)
WASHINGTON — President Trump said on Sunday that he had “strongly pressed” President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia twice about election meddling during their first face-to-face meeting last week but did not dispute Moscow’s claim that he had accepted Mr. Putin’s denial of involvement, as he declared it “time to move forward” in a constructive United States relationship with Russia. WASHINGTON — President Trump tried without success on Sunday to put the matter of Russia’s election meddling behind him, insisting that he had “strongly pressed” President Vladimir V. Putin on the matter twice in a private meeting last week and declaring that it was “time to move forward.”
Mr. Trump’s account, in a thread of morning Twitter posts, of his lengthy and closely scrutinized closed-door meeting with Mr. Putin was an attempt to move beyond the controversy after Moscow characterized the election discussion as a meeting of minds rather than a showdown between the two leaders. But if Mr. Trump believed his willingness to raise the election interference directly with Mr. Putin would quiet questions about whether he could be trusted to stand up to Moscow — an issue that has shadowed his presidency — he grappled instead on Sunday with the reality that the meeting might have raised more suspicions than it quelled.
Mr. Trump’s tweets, though, did little to dispel that notion. He characterized his position as an “opinion” and asserted that he was prepared to team with Moscow — which United States intelligence agencies say carried out a historic effort to interfere with American democracy last year, and will attempt to again — on forming an “impenetrable Cyber Security unit” to thwart future breaches. Lawmakers in both parties said Mr. Trump had appeased the Russian president by failing to insist that he was responsible for the breach or threaten any consequences, and empowered him by agreeing to partner on a cybersecurity effort to prevent future incursions.
“You are hurting your ability to govern this nation by forgiving and forgetting and empowering,” Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said of Mr. Trump, calling his meeting with Mr. Putin “disastrous.”
“The more he talks about this in terms of not being sure, the more he throws our intelligence communities under the bus, the more he’s willing to forgive and forget Putin, the more suspicion,” Mr. Graham added in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “And I think it’s going to dog his presidency until he breaks this cycle.”
As if to underscore the point, the White House confronted reports later Sunday that Donald Trump Jr., Mr. Trump’s eldest son, was promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton before agreeing to meet with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer at Trump Tower during the campaign last year. The accounts of the meeting, by three White House advisers briefed on it and two others with knowledge of it, represent the first public indication that at least some people in Mr. Trump’s campaign were willing to accept Russian help.
Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, had played down that meeting during an appearance on “Fox News Sunday,” calling it a “nothing meeting,” and a “big nothing burger.”
President Trump’s account of his lengthy and closely scrutinized closed-door meeting with Mr. Putin on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit meeting came in a series of Twitter posts the morning after he had returned from the gathering in Hamburg, Germany. They appeared to be an attempt to move beyond the controversy after Moscow characterized the election discussion as a meeting of minds rather than a showdown between the American president and his Russian counterpart.
Administration officials knew that Mr. Trump’s much-anticipated meeting with Mr. Putin was risky and in some ways a no-win situation. The tangle of investigations into his campaign’s possible dealings with Russia raised the stakes and created a damaging backdrop for Mr. Trump, while Mr. Putin’s well-earned reputation for outfoxing and manipulating adversaries suggested that he would stage manage the meeting for maximum advantage, making himself appear to have the upper hand.
On Sunday, it appeared that Mr. Putin had to some degree succeeded in doing just that, after Mr. Trump’s refusal to answer questions about the encounter essentially ceded the narrative to Mr. Putin.
Mr. Trump broke with tradition and declined to hold a news conference at the end of the G-20 summit meeting, instead sending three top officials to brief a small group of reporters on Air Force One as he was returning on Saturday to Washington. None of them would address the claims of Mr. Putin and Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, that Mr. Trump had seemed satisfied with Mr. Putin’s denial of involvement in the hacking.
Mr. Trump’s tweets on Sunday did little to dispel the notion that he had backed down on the election meddling issue. He characterized his position as an “opinion” and asserted that he was prepared to team with Moscow — which United States intelligence agencies say carried out a large-scale effort to interfere with American democracy last year, and will try to again — on forming an “impenetrable Cyber Security unit” to thwart future breaches.
“I strongly pressed President Putin twice about Russian meddling in our election,” Mr. Trump said in one post. “He vehemently denied it. I’ve already given my opinion.”“I strongly pressed President Putin twice about Russian meddling in our election,” Mr. Trump said in one post. “He vehemently denied it. I’ve already given my opinion.”
“We negotiated a ceasefire in parts of Syria which will save lives,” Mr. Trump continued in another message. “Now it is time to move forward in working constructively with Russia!”“We negotiated a ceasefire in parts of Syria which will save lives,” Mr. Trump continued in another message. “Now it is time to move forward in working constructively with Russia!”
The posts, which drew criticism from both Democrats and Republicans, served as Mr. Trump’s first public comments on the meeting after the White House declined to schedule the customary presidential news conference at the end of the Group of 20 gathering in Hamburg, Germany. Mr. Trump’s meeting with Mr. Putin came on the sideline of that event, which ended on Saturday. Mr. Trump’s highlighting of the cybersecurity initiative with Moscow prompted derision from Republicans and Democrats who said Russia was the last country the United States should trust on such matters.
Mr. Putin, however, broke with his normal practice of not speaking to reporters and held a lengthy news conference, in which he said that Mr. Trump had “agreed” with his statements about election interference. “I am sure that Vladimir Putin could be of enormous assistance in that effort, since he’s doing the hacking,” Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona and the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
“He raised many questions on the issue,” Mr. Putin said, according to Sputnik. “I answered all these questions, as far as I could. I think that he took it into account and agreed. Actually, you would better ask him how he found it.” Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, called the idea “dangerously naïve.”
A day before, Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov — the only other Russian official in the meeting, which also included Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson — had said that Mr. Trump had not only accepted Mr. Putin’s denial, but also said that the election meddling allegations had been “exaggerated” by some in the United States without proof. “I don’t think we can expect the Russians to be any kind of a credible partner in some cybersecurity unit,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “If that’s our best election defense, we might as well just mail our ballot boxes to Moscow.”
Yet Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, on Sunday described a confrontational meeting between the two presidents and said that Mr. Trump “absolutely did not believe the denial of President Putin.”
“This was an extensive portion of the meeting,” Mr. Priebus said on “Fox News Sunday.” Senior administration officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the private meeting, have said the election interference occupied about 40 minutes of the 135-minute discussion.
In separate interviews broadcast over the weekend, Nikki R. Haley, the United Nations ambassador, said Mr. Putin’s description of the meeting was an attempt to obfuscate. “This is Russia trying to save face, and they can’t,” she said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “Everybody knows that Russia meddled in our elections.”
“President Trump still knows that they meddled,” Ms. Haley said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” program. “President Putin knows that they meddled, but he is never going to admit to it. And that’s all that happened.”
In a brief question-and-answer session aboard Air Force One as Mr. Trump returned from the summit meeting on Saturday, senior officials did not address the Russian version of events.
Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, said three times that Mr. Trump had handled the meeting “brilliantly” and had “made his position felt.”
“After a very substantive discussion on this, they reached an agreement that they would start a cyberunit to make sure that there was absolutely no interference whatsoever, that they would work on cybersecurity together,” Mr. Mnuchin said. “And President Trump focused the conversation on Syria and the Ukraine and North Korea.”
Mr. Trump’s handling of the meeting with Mr. Putin has become a flash point in the United States, and will continue to be dissected amid the multiple investigations into whether the president’s campaign worked with Russia. Republicans and Democrats on Sunday reacted with alarm to the president’s approach.
Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, called the president’s meeting with Mr. Putin “disastrous,” saying of Mr. Trump, “You are hurting your ability to govern this nation by forgiving and forgetting and empowering.”
“He is hurting his presidency,” Mr. Graham said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “I want a clear message to Russia that you’ll pay a price for undercutting democracy, and if President Trump doesn’t embrace this, I think he will be empowering the Russians and betraying democracy.”
Of the idea of teaming with Russia on cybersecurity, Mr. Graham said, “It’s not the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard, but it’s pretty close.”
Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, also expressed grave concern about a United States-Russia cybersecurity initiative.Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, also expressed grave concern about a United States-Russia cybersecurity initiative.
“Partnering with Putin on a ‘Cyber Security Unit’ is akin to partnering with Assad on a ‘Chemical Weapons Unit,’” he said on Twitter, referring to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, who has repeatedly used chemical weapons to attack his own people. “Partnering with Putin on a ‘Cyber Security Unit’ is akin to partnering with Assad on a ‘Chemical Weapons Unit,’” he said on Twitter, referring to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, who has repeatedly gassed his own people.
Democrats, too, expressed deep skepticism about Mr. Trump’s strategy. Mr. Trump has dispatched administration officials to defend his performance at the meeting. On Sunday, Mr. Priebus flatly said Mr. Lavrov’s version was “not true,” and described a confrontational meeting between the two presidents, saying that Mr. Trump “absolutely did not believe the denial of President Putin.”
Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, called the president’s idea of a joint effort with Moscow against cyberintrusions “dangerously naïve.” “This was an extensive portion of the meeting,” Mr. Priebus said of the election interference discussion.
“I don’t think we can expect the Russians to be any kind of a credible partner in some cybersecurity unit,” he said on Sunday on “State of the Union.” “If that’s our best election defense, we might as well just mail our ballot boxes to Moscow.” Senior administration officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they did not have authorization to talk about the private meeting, have said the discussion of the election interference occupied about 40 minutes of the 135-minute discussion.
In separate interviews that aired over the weekend, Nikki R. Haley, the United Nations ambassador, said Mr. Putin’s description of the meeting was an attempt to obfuscate.
“This is Russia trying to save face, and they can’t,” she said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “Everybody knows that Russia meddled in our elections.”
In a brief question-and-answer session aboard Air Force One as Mr. Trump returned from the summit meeting on Saturday, senior officials did not address or dispute the Russian version of events. But Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, said three times that Mr. Trump had handled the meeting “brilliantly” and had “made his position felt.”
“After a very substantive discussion on this, they reached an agreement that they would start a cyberunit to make sure that there was absolutely no interference whatsoever, that they would work on cybersecurity together,” Mr. Mnuchin said. “And President Trump focused the conversation on Syria and the Ukraine and North Korea.”
But Mr. Putin, a former K.G.B. agent and a martial arts master, showed none of Mr. Trump’s reluctance to answer questions about the meeting. At his news conference on Saturday, he told reporters that Mr. Trump had asked about election interference repeatedly and “agreed” with his statements about it.
“When possible, I answered his questions in detail,” Mr. Putin said. “I got the impression that my answers satisfied him.”
Given Mr. Trump’s past questioning of the extent of Russia’s role — including in Warsaw the day before his meeting with Mr. Putin — that impression is likely to persist.
“He’s worse off now, not better,” said Michael A. McFaul, a former United States ambassador to Russia who served under President Barack Obama. “I don’t think this meeting in any way advanced American national interests or took the air out of people’s suspicions about Trump’s relationship with Russia.”