Putin lauds Trump’s summit performance
MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin stood up for Donald Trump over his performance at their summit and hit out at U.S. critics of the meeting that he said helped ease tensions between their countries.
“Certain forces in America are trying to belittle and disavow the results of the meeting in Helsinki,” which was a success and produced useful agreements, Putin told a gathering of Russian ambassadors and Foreign Ministry officials in Moscow on Thursday. “We see there are forces that place their narrow group interests above those of the nation as a whole.”
Trump’s facing a storm of criticism at home, from Democrats and leading Republicans, after he publicly sided with Putin at the summit against the conclusions of U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election campaign. He issued a belated clarification the next day, which he immediately undercut with qualifiers, then told CBS News on Wednesday that he holds Putin personally responsible for Russian interference. Putin’s comments appear to reflect a Russian shift toward more direct support of the U.S. president, after the Kremlin leader declared for the first time at the meeting that he wanted Trump to win the 2016 election against Hillary Clinton. “Putin formed a political alliance” with Trump at the summit and is now “vocally supporting his U.S. counterpart against his domestic foes,” Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, said Tuesday on Twitter.
Trump returned Putin’s embrace by entertaining a proposal to let Russian authorities question the former U.S. ambassador to Moscow, Michael McFaul, who served under the Obama administration. While he made no commitments when the idea was raised at their private meeting in Helsinki, Trump “is going to meet with his team” to discuss it, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters on Wednesday.
Even contemplating the request makes Trump “look weak,” McFaul said in an MSNBC interview Thursday. “We look like we won’t push back on outrageous, crazy ideas,” he said.