President
Donald Trump, battling allegations that Russia helped him win the White House,
claimed Wednesday that Vladimir Putin actually would have preferred a Hillary
Clinton victory.
Decrying what he called a political “witch hunt,” Trump also came to the
defense of his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr, after the release of emails showing
his namesake’s embrace of a Russian offer to provide derogatory information
about Clinton during the campaign.
The email exchange has been described in some quarters as a possible
“smoking gun” in the ongoing investigation by an independent prosecutor into
whether Trump’s campaign colluded with Moscow to get the Republican elected.
But in an interview with Pat Robertson of the Christian Broadcasting Network,
the billionaire president nonetheless claimed his Russian counterpart would
have preferred a win by the Democrat Clinton in 2016. “There are many things
that I do that are the exact opposite of what he (Putin) would want,” Trump
said, even though he got along “very, very well” with the longtime Russian
leader, whom he met in Hamburg last week. “So what I keep hearing about that he
would have rather had Trump, I think ‘probably not,’ because when I want a
strong military, you know she wouldn’t have spent the money on military,” he
said. “When I want tremendous energy — we’re opening up coal, we’re opening up
natural gas, we’re opening up fracking, all the things that he would hate — but
nobody ever mentions that,” he said. Trump said that while he only learned of
his son’s 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer “a couple of days ago,” he did not
fault Donald Jr for holding the talks. “I think many people would have held
that meeting,” he told the Reuters news agency. “This is the greatest Witch
Hunt in political history. Sad!” tweeted Trump, who has kept a low profile
since returning from a Group of 20 summit in Germany and was to fly out of
Washington again late Wednesday for a visit to France. – ‘Little time’ for TV –
The Washington Post reported that the Kremlin controversy has thrust the
fledgling White House into “chaos” and left Trump “enraged that the Russia
cloud still hangs over his presidency.” CNN quoted a top Republican close to
the administration as saying it has left the White House “paralyzed.” Trump
personally sought Wednesday to dispel the image of an administration in crisis
and a president obsessed with TV coverage of it. “The W.H. is functioning
perfectly, focused on HealthCare, Tax Cuts/Reform & many other things. I
have very little time for watching T.V.” he tweeted. The controversy spilled
over Wednesday into the Senate confirmation hearing for Trump’s nominee to lead
the FBI, Christopher Wray, chosen after the president fired FBI director James
Comey in May in frustration over the Russia probe. Under questioning, Wray said
he had not discussed the investigation — now in the hands of an independent
prosecutor, former FBI director Robert Mueller — with Trump, and pledged to
insulate the agency from political interference. “There is only one right way
to do this job, and that is with strict independence,” Wray said. “I do not
consider director Mueller to be on a witch hunt.” – ‘I love it’ – Donald Trump
Jr released emails on Tuesday in which he was told he could get “very high
level and sensitive information” that was “part of Russia and its government’s
support for Mr. Trump.” In response, the 39-year-old — who runs the family real
estate business — wrote back saying, “if it’s what you say I love it.” He then
held a meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a woman described in the emails as a
“Russian government attorney.” Trump’s then-campaign manager, Paul Manafort,
and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, also attended the June 2016 meeting. Donald
Jr told Fox News he went to the meeting to see what it was about and didn’t mention
it to his father because “there was nothing to tell.” US intelligence agencies
have concluded that Putin approved a mass effort to tilt the election in
Trump’s favor, including hacking and leaking embarrassing emails from
Democrats. The latest disclosures all but ensure the president’s son will come
under scrutiny by investigators in Congress and at the FBI who are probing
whether Trump’s team was in the know. – ‘Fiction’ – The Kremlin, meanwhile,
insisted it had no links to the Russian lawyer, and the Russian billionaire
identified as a middleman for the Donald Jr meeting also sought to distance
himself. “We never had any contact with this lawyer,” said Kremlin spokesman
Dmitry Peskov. “She doesn’t have even the slightest relation to us.” In the emails
released Tuesday, Rob Goldstone — a publicist close to the Trumps — tells
Donald Jr about an offer allegedly made by Russia’s general prosecutor to
provide the Trump campaign with dirt on Clinton during talks with real estate
mogul Aras Agalarov. But Agalarov dismissed the emails touting him as a
go-between for the Trumps and the Kremlin, and said he only vaguely knew
Goldstone. “I think this is some sort of fiction. I don’t know who is making it
up,” Agalarov told Russia’s Business FM radio station.
SOURCE: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2017/07/trump-says-putin-preferred-clinton-win/
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