We all have political rivals, even Trump.. But they don’t all end up dead
it be done this way? Our relationship is made worse because of this.”
Former Russian double agent Skripal, 67, and his daughter Yulia, 33, have both since recovered from the nerve agent attack.
On June 30, Dawn and her partner Charlie fell ill not far from where the Skripal attack happened after being exposed to the same nerve agent.
Dawn died on July 8. Her son, Ewan Hope, had called on Trump to raise his mother’s death with Putin but it is believed he failed to do so.
Quizzed on the deaths of his political opponents, Putin said: “First of all, all of us have plenty of political rivals. I’m pretty sure President Trump has plenty of political rivals.”
“But they don’t end up dead,” Wallace interjected. Putin pointed out that US presidents and Dr Martin Luther King Jr have been assassinated on American soil. “All of us have our own set of domestic problems,” he added.
In the 35-minute interview, the Russian president denied having any blackmail material on the Trump family and rejected claims the Russians had interfered in the presidential contest.
Wallace questioned Putin on the US Justice Department’s recent indictment of 12 Russians accused of interference in the presidential election as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe.
The news anchor presented the indictment to Putin and tried to hand it to him but the Russian leader waved his hand toward a table, refusing to touch it before Wallace put it down.
The interview came as Trump’s team said his first summit with Putin left him looking “incredibly weak” in comparison to his Russian counterpart. The US leader faced condemnation after his 45-minute joint press conference with the Russian president held in Helsinki.
More than 25 members of his Republican party have hit out at Trump, while many labelled the president a “traitor”.
IT WAS the moment the scales must have fallen from the eyes of Trump supporters who aren’t just plain stupid.
In a monumentally defining few hours, a fawning Trump accepted a football from Putin and handed the Russian leader everything he wanted.
It was Trump’s moment to show strength on behalf of western democracy against a tyrannical despot behind a murderous campaign to weaken the west.
Putin is behind the plot to meddle in the American elections, the nerve agent attack on ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal which killed Briton Dawn Sturgess, the invasion of Crimea and air-strikes in Syria in support of its appalling regime.
All aimed at exporting terror among enemies of the Russian despot, bolstering the support of nationalists at home and creating damaging divides between western countries and across Europe.
Yet instead of standing firm against Putin, the US president licked the former KGB man’s boots.
Yesterday a former British intelligence officer told me: “Anyone who doubted the dossier about Trump compiled by former MI6 officer Chris Steele should re-read the first few sentences of the summary...
“It says: ‘The Russian regime has been cultivating, supporting and assisting Trump for at least five years.”
Former CIA director John Brennan blasted Trump, saying his behaviour during the press conference with Putin was “nothing short of treasonous” after he refused to back his intelligence agencies in their assertion Russian meddled with the 2016 election.
On Monday, fears increased that Putin had recorded his two-hour meeting with Trump and that he may use it against the president in the future. BY CHRIS HUGHES