• Trump backs U.S. intel on Russia,
Says he is ‘with’ agencies but he believes Putin’s sincerity in denying election interference
MANILA, Philippines — President Donald Trump tried to have it both ways over the weekend on the issue of Russian interference in last year’s presidential race, as his lengthy Asia trip wound down as it began, with a visit meant to be centered on trade and North Korea shadowed by questions about Moscow.
Mr. Trump was in the Philippines, the final stop of his trip, on Monday, poised to hold formal talks with President Rodrigo Duterte, who has overseen a bloody drug war that has featured extrajudicial killings and fears of vigilante justice. But Mr. Trump remains dogged by things he has said, and has not said, about Russia.
Before arriving in Manila, Mr. Trump said he believes U.S. intelligence agencies, which have concluded that Russia meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. But he also said he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin is sincere when he says Russia didn’t interfere.
“I believe that he feels that he and Russia did not meddle in the election,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Putin at a news conference with Vietnam’s president in Hanoi. “As to whether I believe it, I’m with our agencies.”
He added, “As currently led by fine people, I believe very much in our intelligence agencies.”
That was just one among a series of remarks made by the president in a stream of Sunday-morning tweets and in a wide-ranging talk with reporters on Air Force One en route to Hanoi on Saturday that sharply punctured the careful messaging he and his aides had sought to deliver on the five-nation, 12day trip through Asia.
He also was seen as ridiculing North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un as “short and fat,” and he lashed out at critics of his relationship with Russia’s leader, saying they are “haters and fools” who don’t understand the merits of a good relationship with Moscow.
Top U.S. intelligence officials, including those at the CIA, have concluded that Russia interfered in the election to help the Republican Mr. Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton. A special counsel and multiple Congressional committees are also investigating potential collusion between Moscow and Trump campaign aides. That probe has so far led to the indictments of Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman and another top aide for financial and other crimes unrelated to the campaign, as well as a guilty plea from a Trump foreign policy adviser.
It’s a question that has followed Mr. Trump since January, when he said for the first time at a press conference in Trump Tower shortly before taking office that he accepted Russia was behind the election year hacking of Democrats that roiled the White House race.
“As far as hacking, I think it was Russia,” Mr. Trump said then, quickly adding that “other countries and other people” also hack U.S. interests.
Mr. Trump also lashed out at the former heads of the nation’s intelligence agencies, claiming there were plenty of reasons to be suspicious of their findings. “I mean, give me a break. They’re political hacks,” Mr. Trump said, citing by name James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, John Brennan, the former CIA director and his ousted ex-FBI director James Comey.