Trump sends mixed messages on Putin, Russian hacking
President’s stance on hacking, cyber panel ridiculed, even by some Republicans
Fresh off a G- 20 summit WASHINGTON that included a meeting with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, President Trump and aides sought Sunday to get the Russia hacking investigation behind them — while lawmakers from both parties served notice that won’t happen anytime soon.
“I strongly pressed President Putin twice about Russian meddling in our election,” Trump tweeted. “He vehemently denied it. I’ve already given my opinion ...”
On his recent trip to Poland and Germany, Trump told reporters that “it could very well have been Russia” that hacked top Democrats, “but I think it could well have been other countries” as well. “Nobody really knows for sure,” the president said.
During his Sunday tweet storm, Trump said it is time to “move forward” in working with Russia. He included a proposal for a joint U. S.- Russian “cyber security unit” to address hacking, an idea ridiculed even by Republicans who said Putin simply cannot be trusted.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R- S. C., speaking on NBC’s Meet the Press, said he is “dumbfounded” by Trump’s overall response to the Russian hacking scandal, including the president’s implicit criticism of the findings of the U. S. intelligence community.
“I think it’s going to dog his presidency until he breaks this cycle,” Graham said.
Russian officials said Trump accepted Putin’s denial of Russian hacking and said that political enemies are exaggerating the issue— claims that U. S. officials did not dispute a day after the high- profile meeting on the sidelines of the G- 20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, However, during an interview on
White House chief of staff Reince Priebus said Trump does not believe Putin’s denials, and repeatedly pressed the Russian president on election meddling before moving on to other issues. ( Priebus added that Trump believes others have meddled in elections as well, citing China and North Korea.)
“So, yes, he believes that Russia probably committed all of these acts that we’ve been told of, but he also believes that other countries also participated in this,” Priebus told Fox News.
Trump met with Putin on Friday; he returned to the White House on Saturday night.
As Special Counsel Robert Mueller and congressional committees investigate Russian election meddling — and any links there may have been to the Trump campaign — the president also used Twitter to again attack Democrats and the news media over questions surrounding his 2016 race against Hillary Clinton.
Trump’s tweets, including one which he said Putin “discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit” that could address hacking and “many other negative things,” drew expressions of dismay from fellow Republicans.
“Partnering with Putin on a ‘ Cyber Security Unit’ is akin to partnering with Assad on a ‘ Chemical Weapons Unit.’ ” tweeted Sen. Marco Rubio, R- Fla.
A rival of Trump’s during last year’s Republican primaries, Rubio also said: “We have no quarrel with Russia or the Russian people. Problem is with Putin & his oppression, war crimes & interference in our elections.”
Graham, speaking on NBC, said a U.S Russian cyber security unit is “not the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard, but it’s pretty close.”
Democratic opponents of Trump questioned whether the president is willing to do anything about Russian efforts to interfere in last year’s election, and vowed to continue investigating possible links between Russian hackers and the Trump campaign.
U. S. Rep. Adam Schiff, D- Calif., top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said Trump supports Russia by consistently undercutting the U. S. intelligence community’s assessment that Putin’s government authorized the election hacking. “I don’t think we can expect the Russians to be any kind of a credible partner in some cyber security unit,” Schiff told CNN’s State of the Union.
Calling the idea “dangerously naive,” Schiff said: “If that’s our best election defense, we might as well just mail our ballot boxes to Moscow.”
Trump also made a point of tweeting that he and Putin did not talk about lifting a series of U. S. economic sanctions imposed on Russia after last year’s election and after military activities in Ukraine, including the 2014 “annexation” of the Crimea region.
“Nothing will be done until the Ukrainian & Syrian problems are solved!” Trump tweeted regarding Russian sanctions.
U. S. and Russian officials also gave different stories about the hacking flap after the meeting.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the U. S. president accepted Putin’s denial about the hacking. U. S. officials did not dispute Lavrov’s statement, more or less confirming it.
Asked about Lavrov, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said Saturday: “You know, we’re not going to make comments about what other people say. President Trump will be happy to make statements himself about that.”
Appearing Sunday on ABC’s This Week, Mnuchin said there’s no reason for Trump to “broadcast” everything he said to Putin, and that the president has “made it very clear how he feels.”
In other Twitter posts, Trump criticized the Democrats for poor cyber security, President Obama for not moving against the Russians during the election season, and the news media for their coverage of the various investigations.
The president also expressed a desire to work with Putin and Russia on global issues: “We negotiated a ceasefire in parts of Syria which will save lives. Now it is time to move forward in working constructively with Russia!”