Trump buys Putin’s 'strong and powerful' denial of election hacking
The US president says his Russian counterpart is not an adversary but a competitor, which he considers a compliment
Helsinki — US President Donald Trump emerged from a meeting with Vladimir Putin on Monday saying he saw no reason to believe Russia had hacked the 2016 US presidential election, and the Russian leader "was extremely strong and powerful" in denying the allegation. Trump held his meeting just days after a special prosecutor in the US indicted 12 Russian agents for stealing Democratic Party documents to help Trump win the vote. At a rambling news conference after one-on-one talks, Trump said not a single critical word about Russia on any of the issues that have brought relations between Washington and Moscow to a post-Cold War low, from Ukraine to Syria. Asked if he trusted US intelligence agencies, which concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, Trump said he had been told by his CIA chief that Russia was to blame, but he was not certain. "I don’t see any reason why it would be" Russia, Trump said. "President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today." B...
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