I’ll invite Putin to the White House when time is right, says President
Trump says he pressed Russian leader over election hacking, but didn’t want to get into a ‘fist fight’
PRESIDENT Donald Trump has said he will invite Russian leader Vladimir Putin to the White House, but only at “the right time”.
Mr Trump said: “I don’t think this is the right time, but the answer is yes, I would.
“Look, it’s very easy for me to say absolutely I won’t. That’s the easy thing for me to do, but that’s the stupid thing to do. If you don’t have dialogue, you have to be fools. Let’s be the smart people, not the stupid people.”
Mr Trump made the comments on Air Force One on Wednesday night but they were only published late yesterday evening.
The US president also described how he had pressed Mr Putin at the G20 in Hamburg last week over election hacking but had not wanted to get into a “fist fight”.
Mr Trump said he asked Mr Putin “very simply were you involved with the meddling in the election? He said, absolutely not. I was not involved. He was very strong on it”.
Mr Trump added: “I then said to him again, in a totally different way, ‘Were you involved with the meddling?’ He said, ‘I was not, absolutely not’.”
Mr Trump said: “He said absolutely not, twice. What do you do? End up in a fist fight with somebody, OK?”
“I’m not saying it [the election hacking] wasn’t Russia. What I’m saying is that we have to protect ourselves no matter who it is.
“You know, China is very good at this. I hate to say it, North Korea is very good at this.”
Yesterday, Mr Trump publicly defended his son’s meeting with a Russian lawyer during the presidential election.
Donald Trump Jr has been called to testify in front of a Senate committee over the meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya. The extraordinary prospect of the president’s eldest son being taken to task by senators about his connections to Russia could take place as early as next week.
Chuck Grassley, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, confirmed he was sending a letter to Mr Trump Jr asking him to attend, and made clear the committee would issue a subpoena if necessary. Mr Trump, speaking in Paris, defended his son as a “wonderful young man” and said what he had done was “very standard in politics” which was “not the nicest business in the world”.
He said: “I think, from a practical standpoint, it’s a meeting most people in politics probably would have taken. It’s called opposition research or even research into your opponent. Zero happened from the meeting. A lot of people would do it.”
Mr Trump Jr confirmed this week that he met Miss Veselnitskaya at Trump Tower in New York on June 9 2016. He released emails that showed the meeting was set up by an acquaintance, Rob Goldstone, a British publicist who represented a Russian pop star.
In the emails, Mr Goldstone told Mr Trump Jr that he would be meeting a “Russian government attorney” and could expect information damaging to Hillary Clinton, which was part of a Russian effort to support his father.
Miss Veselnitskaya has denied connections to the Kremlin, and Mr Trump Jr has said the meeting “went nowhere”, so he did not tell his father about it. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee and will question Mr Trump Jr, promised to “pursue justice without favour” and added: “Were there other meetings? I’m going to go wherever the facts take us.”
He added: “If any government tried to help my campaign I would say no because they’re trying to destroy democracy. It’s a pretty simple proposition in America.
“He’s a relevant witness. This is a chance for Donald Trump Jr to tell his side of the story.”