Ukraine call: Putin backs Trump; Pompeo says he was listening
MOSCOW/WASHINGTON: Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday sided with his US counterpart Donald Trump in the domestic political storm raging in the United States, and briefly joked that Moscow would hack the US presidential election in 2020.
Putin said Trump, who faces an impeachment inquiry over accusations that he pressured Ukraine’s president to dig up dirt on a political rival ahead of the November 2020 election, had done nothing wrong by looking into possible cases of corruption.
Putin said he had not seen any evidence of Trump pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in the reconstructed transcript of the conversation released by the White House.
“...I don’t see anything compromising at all. President Trump asked his colleague to investigate possible corrupt deals by former administration employees,” Putin told a conference in Moscow. “Any head of state would be obliged to do this.”
US intelligence agencies have said Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election campaign in order to tilt the vote in Trump’s favour. Moscow has denied any interference.
Pressed by a moderator to speak to fears of a Russian attempt to interfere in the elections next year, Putin leaned into the microphone for comic effect.
“I’ll tell you a secret - yes, we’ll definitely do this to cheer you up over there once and for all,” Putin said. He added that he would not mind if his phone calls with Trump were published and that, because of his intelligence background, he always assumed that his words could potentially be published whenever he speaks.
POMPEO WAS ON TRUMP UKRAINE CALL
Secretary of state Mike Pompeo acknowledged on Wednesday that he was on the July phone call between President Donald Trump and the Ukraine president that’s at the centre of the House impeachment inquiry.
But Pompeo continued to push back against what he said was Democrats’ “bullying and intimidation”.
‘MIGRANTS SHOULD BE SHOT IN THE LEGS’
President Donald Trump suggested the border wall be electrified with spikes on top that could pierce human flesh, and proposed that it should be fortified with a “water-filled trench” with “snakes or alligators”, during a March meeting with the White House advisors in the Oval Office, The New York Times reported.
He also asked his advisers to shut down the entire 2,000-mile border with Mexico by noon the next day. Trump also advised that migrants be shot in their legs.
The NYT report is based on interviews with more than a dozen White House administration officials involved in the events during the week of the meeting. The article was adapted from Border Wars: Inside Trump’s Assault on Immigration, a book to be published by NYT reporters Michael Shear and Julie Hirschfeld Davis.