US President Donald Trump believes Vladimir Putin should be held responsible for alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election after all – since he is the president of Russia, Trump told CBS.
The network teased a quote from Trump ahead of airing his interview with CBS Evening News anchor Jeff Glor, which was broadcast at 6:30 pm Eastern Time on Wednesday. In it, Glor asks Trump if he would hold Putin personally culpable for the alleged election interference.
Trump said yes, although he apparently stopped short of actually blaming Putin for personally ordering an influence op, the way his opponents tend to.
“I would because he’s in charge of the country just like I consider myself to be responsible for things that happen in this country,” Trump said. “So certainly as the leader of the country you would have to hold him responsible.”
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He also said he warned Putin against future meddling during their summit in Helsinki, Finland, on Monday.
“I let him know we can’t have this. We’re not going to have it. And that’s the way it’s going to be,” Trump said.
Mainstream US media, Democratic politicians and not a few never-Trump Republicans joined in a chorus of condemnations after Trump did not use the press conference following the summit to publicly attack Putin the way they thought he should have.
The US president was accused of “siding with the KGB over the CIA” and betraying American democracy by not taking the assessment of US intelligence agencies at face value, rather than appearing to give equal weight to Putin’s “powerful” insistence that Russia did not interfere in the 2016 election.
Facing the onslaught of criticism, Trump sought to clarify his remarks by telling reporters that when he said he saw no reason why Russia “would” interfere, he meant to say he saw no reason why it “wouldn’t” be Russia, which led to another media frenzy.
Former CIA Director John Brennan, who was part of the task force that put together the infamous “intelligence community assessment” published in January 2017, said Trump’s conduct at the press conference was “nothing short of treasonous.”
Ex-FBI Director James Comey, who was also part of the task force, tweeted on Tuesday that “All who believe in this country’s values must vote for Democrats this fall.”
The man who oversaw the report, former director of national intelligence James Clapper, famously said last year that Russians are “typically, almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique.”
Brennan and Clapper resigned at the end of Barack Obama’s presidential term. Comey’s firing in May 2017 prompted the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller to pursue the claim that Trump’s campaign somehow “colluded” with Russia during the 2016 campaign. No evidence of such collusion has been presented since.
