Putin offers Oval Office transcript to Senate
Russian president sticks up for Trump, calling critics ‘stupid’
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that he is ready to provide the U.S. Senate with a transcript of last week’s controversial Oval Office meeting between President Trump and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov that is at the center of allegations Trump revealed highly classified information.
“If the U.S. administration considers it possible, we are ready to submit a transcript of Lavrov’s talk with Trump to the U.S. Senate and Congress, if, of course, the U.S. administration would want this,” Putin said, according to the Russian-owned Tass news agency.
Putin’s comments came during a joint news conference in the Black Sea resort of Sochi with visiting Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni.
Trump has come under fire after news reports that he shared sensitive intelligence about an Islamic State plot with Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during a meeting at the White House.
At one point, Putin jokingly said he needed to upbraid Lavrov for failing to share the “secrets” with him.
“I will have to reprimand him because he shared these secrets neither with me nor with the Russian secret services which is very inappropriate on his part,” Putin joked, according to the Russian Interfax news agency.
Putin said he had “no other explanation” about why Trump has come under attack over the incident other than “political schizophrenia,” according to Interfax.
The Russian president said he initially found debates about Russia’s possible meddling in U.S. politics “funny,” but he said Moscow is now “concerned because it’s hard to imagine what the peo- ple who produce such nonsense can come up with next.”
He dismissed U.S. politicians — unnamed — as either being “stupid” or “dangerous and unscrupulous” who are wittingly “causing the damage to their own country.”
Asked what he thinks of the Trump presidency, Putin said that it’s up to the American people to judge but that Trump’s performance can be rated “only when he’s allowed to work at full capacity.”
The White House on Tuesday defended Trump’s discussions with the Russian foreign minister and the Russian ambassador.
Speaking to Russian news agencies Wednesday Yuri Ushakov, a Putin aide, earlier would not comment on the contents of last week’s talks among Trump, Lavrov and Kislyak. Ushakov said “any contacts” with the U.S. president are “important,” but he would not reply to the question of whether the classified information Trump reportedly shared with Lavrov and Kislyak was valuable for Russia.
“If the U.S. administration considers it possible, we are ready to submit a transcript of (Sergei) Lavrov’s talk with Trump to the U.S. Senate.” Russian President Vladimir Putin