Trump says he holds Putin personally responsible for election meddling

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Trump says he holds Putin personally responsible for election meddling

Washington - Just like I consider myself to be responsible for things that happen in the US, he said.

By Agencies

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Published: Thu 19 Jul 2018, 10:22 PM

President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he holds Russian President Vladimir Putin personally responsible for Russia's meddling in the 2016 US presidential election.
"Just like I consider myself to be responsible for things that happen in this country. So certainly as the leader of a country you would have to hold him responsible, yes," Trump told CBS News in an interview. 
Blistered by bipartisan condemnation of his embrace of a longtime US enemy, President Donald Trump backed away from his public undermining of American intelligence agencies, saying he simply misspoke when he said he saw no reason to believe Russia had interfered in the 2016 US election.
Rebuked as never before by his own party, including a stern pushback from usually reserved Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the US president sought to end 27 hours of recrimination by delivering a rare admission of error.
"The sentence should have been, 'I don't see any reason why I wouldn't, or why it wouldn't be Russia'" instead of "why it would," Trump said on Tuesday of the comments he had made standing alongside Vladimir Putin on the summit stage in Helsinki.
That didn't explain why Trump, who had tweeted a half-dozen times and sat for two television interviews since the Putin news conference, waited so long to correct his remarks. And the scripted cleanup pertained only to the least defensible of his comments.
He didn't reverse other statements in which he gave clear credence to Putin's "extremely strong and powerful" denial of Russian involvement, raised doubts about his own intelligence agencies' conclusions and advanced discredited conspiracy theories about election meddling.
He also accused past American leaders, rather than Russia's destabilizing actions in the US and around the world, for the souring of relations between two countries. And he did not address his other problematic statements during a week-long Europe tour, in which he sent the Nato alliance into emergency session and assailed British Prime Minister Theresa May as she was hosting him for an official visit.
"I accept our intelligence community's conclusion that Russia's meddling in the 2016 election took place," Trump conceded on Tuesday. But even then he made a point of adding, "It could be other people also. A lot of people out there. There was no collusion at all."
Moments earlier, McConnell felt the need to reassure America's allies in Europe with whom Trump clashed during his frenzied trip last week.
With no if's or but's, the GOP leader declared, "The European countries are our friends, and the Russians are not."


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