Trump says he didn’t ask Putin about bounties on U.S. troops
President Donald Trump did not ask President Vladimir Putin whether Russian operatives in Afghanistan had paid Taliban-affiliated militants bounties to kill American soldiers, Trump said in a new interview, dismissing a scenario backed by U.S. intelligence as “fake news.”
Trump made the comments in an interview on Tuesday with Axios scheduled to air on HBO next week. Portions of it were released early Wednesday.
Trump spoke by telephone last week with Putin, but during a public appearance on Monday declined to say whether he had raised the bounty issue.
“We don’t talk about what we discussed, but we had plenty of discussion,” he told reporters.
But Trump was more direct when pressed by Axios reporter Jonathan Swan. “That was a phone call to discuss other things, and frankly that’s an issue that many people said was fake news,” he said.
“If it reached my desk, I would have done something about it,” Trump added, without elaborating on what action he would have taken.
Trump said the purpose of last week’s call with Putin was “to discuss nuclear proliferation,” calling that issue “a much bigger problem than global warming.”
Asked directly about the bounties, Trump said, “I have never discussed it with him.” Trump has spoken to the Russian leader numerous times in recent months.
Although Trump cast the bounty allegation as a media fiction, U.S. intelligence analysts found evidence of the scheme credible, although some intelligence officials have higher confidence on the question than others. The intelligence was provided to Trump in a written briefing in February, but it is unclear whether he read it.
Trump has long taken pains not to personally criticize Putin, despite generally hostile relations between Washington and Moscow, and even seemed intent on downplaying evidence of broader Russian military and financial support for the Taliban.
Asked about claims to that effect by the former top U.S. general in Afghanistan, Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr., Trump dismissed the notion. “I didn’t ask Nicholson about that,” he said.
In an interview with the BBC in 2018, Nicholson, then the commander of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, said publicly that the Russians were sending weapons to the Taliban.