Prez: Move on so we can get along
President Trump wants to “move forward” after pressing Russian leader Vladimir Putin on meddling in the election during a highly anticipated private sit-down between the world’s two premier alpha dogs.
“It’s not clear to me that we will ever come to some agreed-upon resolution of that question between the two nations,” said Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. “So the question is, what do we do now? I think the relationship ... is too important to not find a way to move forward.”
In fact, Tillerson used a variation of the phrase “move forward” seven times in his brief remarks to reporters after the meeting — a sign that Trump may be willing to overlook Russian hacking if Putin plays ball on other issues, such as pressuring North Korea or helping to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Trump noted to Putin the new sanctions the U.S. Senate passed last month against Russia and “pressed” him more than once on election meddling, which Putin denied, according to Tillerson. He added that both leaders acknowledged the issue is a “substantial hindrance in the ability of us to move the Russian-U.S. relationship forward.”
But just bringing up hacking to Putin may help quiet some of Trump’s Democratic critics, who charged in the days leading up to the meeting that ignoring the topic would amount to a “dereliction of duty.”
Trump and Putin met for 2 hours and 15 minutes — so long that first lady Melania Trump tried unsuccessfully to move her husband along about one hour in.
After the meeting, Tillerson’s Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, claimed that Trump “accepts” Putin’s statements that the former Cold War foe didn’t interfere in the election. The White House denied that account.
The two countries did agree to a partial cease-fire in southwest Syria, effective tomorrow. The U.S. and Russia are backing opposing sides in the country’s six-year-old civil war. Tillerson heralded the deal as proof the two nations can indeed work together in Syria, where the fight against ISIS also rages on.
The Trump-Putin facetotook place on the sidelines of the G-20 in Hamburg, Germany.
The international summit did not prevent Trump from tweeting vitriol at his enemies yesterday. Besides the “Fake News Media,” he also took shots at Hillary Clinton’s former campaign chairman.
“Everyone here is talking about why John Podesta refused to give the DNC server to the FBI and the CIA. Disgraceful!” tweeted the president.
The Democratic National Committee denied the FBI its hacked servers during its investigation and instead hired a third-party to turn over its findings.
“Dude,” said Podesta, denying any involvement in the DNC, “get your head in the game. You’re representing the US at the G20.”