Putin ‘manipulating Trump with flattery’

MANILA: A day after being criticised by US President Donald Trump, a former CIA director questioned whether Russian President Vladimir Putin was manipulating Trump with flattery during the president’s lengthy trip to Asia.

Trump remains dogged by things he has said, and not said, about Russia.

He tried to have it both ways on the issue of Russian inter- ference in last year’s presidential race, saying he believes US intelligence agencies when they say Russia meddled and Putin’s sincerity in claiming that his country did not.

“I believe that he feels he and Russia did not meddle in the election,” Trump said in Hanoi, Vietnam. “As to whether I believe it, I’m with our agencies,” Trump said.

But just a day earlier, he had lashed out at the former heads of the US intelligence agencies, dismissing them as “political hacks” and claiming there were plenty of reasons to be suspicious of their findings that Russia meddled to help Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Former CIA director John Brennan, appearing yesterday on CNN’s State of the Union with former intelligence direc- tor James Clapper, said Trump was deriding them to “delegitimise” the intelligence community’s assessment.

“I think Mr Putin is very clever in terms of playing to Mr Trump’s interest in being flattered. And also I think Mr Trump is either intimidated by Mr Putin, afraid of what he could do or what might come out as a result of these investigations,”he said.– ANA-AP