The Trumpstes are big on repetition. They fairly consistently repeat the phrases “No collusion” and of course “Witch Hunt”, but they have a third most popular and heavily repeated phrase:
“No one has been tougher on Russia.”
There’s a reason they repeat these phrases so often, which is because they are blatant and obvious lies. The evidence of collusion, collaboration and conspiracy was made obvious months ago. It’s been clear based on the DOJ Inspector General Report and the details of the FISA warrant which were revealed by Dems in the House, as well as the finally released redacted copies of the warrants that there was plenty of probable cause and evidence to investigate the Trump campaign.
When it comes to being “toughest” on Russia I would expect that the naval blockade that was implemented by President Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis pretty much wins that particular territorial pissing contest by miles.
But that’s not the only example, and it’s useful to be reminded of the many, many others examples particularly when so many of them are actually cases where Trump has bent over backward to accommodate the whims of Russia and Putin rather than actually “getting tough” with them.
In this entry in the Talking Points for Dems series these are the facts in brief.
- Carter, Reagan, and both Bushes were tougher on Russia than Trump has been.
- Obama crushed Russia’s economy with sanctions in retaliation for Crimea.
- Obama really confronted Putin, threated “Armed Conflict” and planned for a Cyberwar to deter Russia’s election attacks.
- Donald Trump’s administration tried multiple times to end Obama’s Russia sanctions.
- Trump tried to water down congressional sanctions against Russia, whined about them and slow-walked their implementation.
- Trump has so far only implemented sanctions that came from Obama or Congress over Crimea but blocked others over Syria.
- Trump was angry about the ejection of 60 Russian diplomats in retaliation for the nerve-attack in Britain.
- Trump gave Ukraine weapons that they aren’t allowed to use against Russia.
- The fight between U.S. Forces and Pro-Assad Russian Mercenaries wasn’t ordered by Trump.
Details to follow.
[@4:15] Huckabee-Sanders: [Trump] has been incredibly tough on Russia. He’s brought [Russian interference] up directly to [Putin] every single time that they have met. He has put unprecedented sanctions and been extremely tough on Russia across a number of fronts we’ve addressed here many times before. Frankly, I’m not sure why that is so hard for the media to write about.
Why is it so hard? Well, that's because it's a fucking lie.
1. Carter, Reagan, and both Bushes were tougher on Russia.
My first regular job with a weekly paycheck was for Northrop Grumman working on a classified project, the B-2 Stealth Bomber. The first few years we couldn’t even tell anyone what we were working on, not until the project was declassified in the late 80’s. About that same time, the film Hunt For Red October debuted, where the entire point of the story was where a Russia stealth submarine captain had determined that his ship, which was the first of its kind, needed to be given to America because it was “too dangerous as a nuclear first strike weapon.”
Every B-2 bomber is like a Red October. They can deliver twice the payload of a B-52, including nuclear weapons, to basically any target on the earth without being detected, including Moscow.
One fun fact about the B-2 that most people don’t realize is that it was originally authorized before Ronald Reagan became President, which means it was a program started by Jimmy Carter. This program and the threat of Reagans “Star Wars” project — which never really got off the ground — pushed Russia into an arms race that they couldn't win and slowly ground their economy to a dead stop.
Reagan to his credit kept the pressure up with his talk of the “Evil Empire” and proclaiming “Mr. Gorbechev, tear down this wall" in Berlin. Eventually, that pressure ultimately worked and the Soviet Union crumbled during G. H. W. Bush’s Administration in 1991.
So Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and Bush the Elder all have grounds to argue they've been “tougher” on Russia than anything Trump has done. The Soviet Union doesn’t exist anymore because of their combined efforts.
And arguably President G.W. Bush did more to Russia than Trump when Russia invaded Georgia.
Neither did the Bush administration during the 2008 Georgia-Russia war. In a brief, five-day conflict, the Russian army routed its outnumbered and outgunned Georgian opponent and advanced to within a short drive of the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. Bush officials ruled out military options and found that, given the deterioration in U.S.-Russian relations over the previous five years, they had few good levers to influence the Kremlin. The sanctions Washington applied at the time had little resonance in Moscow.
In recent days, however, former Bush administration officials have described a forceful and effective U.S. response in Georgia. On “Fox News Sunday” on March 16, former senior White House adviser Karl Rove told Chris Wallace, “What the United States did was it sent warships to, to the Black Sea, it took the combat troops that Georgia had in Afghanistan, and airlifted them back, sending a very strong message to Putin that ‘you’re going to be facing combat-trained, combat-experienced Georgian forces.’ And not only that, but the United States government is willing to give logistical support to get them there, and this stopped them
Has Trump sent our warships to the Black Sea in order to put Russia on notice that were serious, I mean about anything?
2. Obama Crushed Russia’s Economy in retaliation for Crimea.
President Obama also did more because it was sanctions that he implemented in 2014 in response to their invasion of Crimea and their attacks on Ukraine that brought the Russian economy to it's knees.
Speaking at a Moscow event in early October, Russian President Vladimir Putin sounded cocky about the sanctions imposed on his country by Washington and its European allies. The penalties, Putin said, were “utter silliness” that would only hurt Western businesses.
But now that Russia’s economy is rapidly imploding, with oil prices plunging and the ruble collapsing, Putin is the one feeling the pain. And the question already being debated in Washington is whether President Barack Obama’s strategy of economically sanctioning and isolating Russia deserves any credit.
“It’s hard to disaggregate out the independent effects of the sanctions from the bigger story. Obviously the driver is oil prices,” said Obama’s former ambassador to Moscow, Michael McFaul.
“That said, there is no doubt that sanctions raise uncertainty about the Russian economy. Their own minister of economic development said today that the ruble is falling faster than the macroeconomic indicators would suggest it should be,” McFaul added.
And how did the impact of these sanctions work over time? By 2016, things had become pretty dire particularly with Russia chief export, Oil.
Since Russia's annexation of Crimea in March, 2014, the U.S. and EU have also leveled sanctions against Russia several times, tightening restrictions on major Russian state banks and corporations, including blacklisting dozens of Russian officials and firms, including energy firms. Three major state oil firms have been targeted: Rosneft , Transneft and Gazprom Neft, the oil unit of gas giant Gazprom.
Russian banks and Gazprom’s ability to secure long term funding in U.S. dollars were also blocked. The U.S. and EU also banned exports of services and technology to Russian state oil firms engaged in Arctic and deep-water and unconventional oil and gas exploration and production.
Sanctions have hit Russian energy companies hard, especially its longer term projects. In late April, independent Russian energy companies Lukoil and Novatek , told attendees at the annual IHS CERAWeek energy conference in Houston that they were feeling the sting of the sanctions. "We feel the impact of sanctions, but we need some time for Russia and the industry to adjust," said Lukoil CEO and founder Vagit Alekperov.
Just as a reminder, Exxon-Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson had negotiated a $500 Billion deal with Rosneft which had been hung up by these sanctions. “Energy Consultant” Carter Page had been working on doing deals with Gazprom as far back as 2013, and Cambridge Analytica’s data-mining project which stole the personal data of 87 Million American Voters was originally financed by Russia Oil company Lukoil.
All of these groups had every reason to want to end the sanctions, not continue or extend them, and that’s exactly what they attempted to do with the Trump administration.
Obama also implemented the Magnitski Act to sanction businesses connected to a $150 Million tax rebate scheme involving Bill Browder's company after the Russian government seized it, then jailed and murdered his lawyer Sergei Magnitski who had researched and exposed the plot.
3. Obama confronted Putin, threated “Armed Conflict” and planned cyberwar to deter Russia’s election attacks
Trump likes to repeatedly say that Obama didn’t do “anything” in response to Russia hack and attack against our democracy, but that isn’t true. For starters he ejected dozens of Russian diplomats and closed two of their compounds as well as ordered Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to alert and fortify state election systems as well as informing Congress. Then he confronted Putin face to face about it, not just asked “did you do it?” but told him to “Cut it out!” during a Summit.
President Barack Obama has said that he ordered Russia's Vladimir Putin to "cut it out" in a conversation about email hacking ahead of the US election.
Implying that the Russian president knew about the hacks, Mr Obama said: "Not much happens in Russia without Vladimir Putin."
The president said he had warned Mr Putin of serious consequences at a summit in September.
People at the time said that was pretty minor, but now that we’ve seen how Trump behaves in front of Putin — it’s pretty refreshing.
And it didn’t end there, CIA Director Brennen also got on the phone and contacted the head of the FSB and delivered the same message.
Brennan said that he first picked up on Russia's active meddling last summer and, in an August 4, 2016, phone call with Alexander Bortnikov, the head of Russia's FSB intelligence agency, warned him against further interference. Bortnikov, Brennan said, denied any active efforts in the election.
Rep. Mike Turner, an Ohio Republican, grilled Brennan on whether evidence he cited amounted to collusion between Trump aides and Russia.
"Seeing these types of contacts during the same period of time raised my concern," Brennan said.
Brennan cautioned lawmakers that although he could not definitively say if those contacts amounted to "collusion," he knew that Russians were actively cultivating US contacts and, very likely, did not present themselves as Russian spies.
And it went further, as the election approached Obama used the Nuclear “Red Phone” to contact Russia with even more direct warnings.
A month later, the U.S. used the latest incarnation of an old Cold War communications system — the so-called "Red Phone" that connects Moscow to Washington — to reinforce Obama’s September warning that the U.S. would consider any interference on Election Day a grave matter.
This time Obama used the phrase "armed conflict."
"International law, including the law for armed conflict, applies to actions in cyberspace," said part of a message sent over the Red Phone on Oct. 31, according to a senior U.S. official. "We will hold Russia to those standards.”
Obama also placed the seeds to allow for a full-on cyberwar with Russia in case they continued their attacks.
Obama also approved a previously undisclosed covert measure that authorized planting cyberweapons in Russia’s infrastructure, the digital equivalent of bombs that could be detonated if the United States found itself in an escalating exchange with Moscow. The project, which Obama approved in a covert-action finding, was still in its planning stages when Obama left office. It would be up to President Trump to decide whether to use the capability.
So has Trump used this capability? According to NSA Director Mike Rogers, “No.”
“What do you need as the commander to say go after and punish these guys that are trying to tear apart our critical infrastructure?” Nelson pressed.
“I need a policy decision that indicates that there’s specific direction to do that,” Rogers said. “The secretary [of defense] would ultimately make a recommendation to the president… and then based on that, we’d be given specific direction and specific authority.”
“So you need a direction and specific authority from the White House?” Nelson remarked.
“The president ultimately would make this decision,” Rogers stated.
4. Donald Trump tried multiple times to end Obama’s Russia sanctions
Besides Michael Flynn’s lying about his conversation with Russian Ambassador Kislyak where he suggested that Obama’s sanctions over election meddling were potentially “optional”, as soon as he gained office Trump’s people tried to end or block sanctions against Russia at least 4 separate times and one of those attempts was what prompted Congress to increase sanctions and also block his ability to turn them off without Congressional approval.
Before their CEO Rex Tillerson was named Secretary of State Exxon Mobil tried to have Russian Sanctions dropped for Oil companies.
HOUSTON — Exxon Mobil is pursuing a waiver from Treasury Department sanctions on Russia to drill in the Black Sea in a venture with Rosneft, the Russian state oil company, a former State Department official said on Wednesday. An oil industry official confirmed the account.
The waiver application was made under the Obama administration, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity, and the company has not dropped the proposal.
The proposal is now before the Trump administration at a delicate time in Russian-American relations, with rising tensions over the war in Syria and a looming congressional inquiry into reports of Russian efforts to influence the United States presidential election.
That request was ultimately denied by the Treasury Dept.
Then there was the time that Trump attended his first NATO summit and discussed dropping sanctions on Russia.
In his first trip abroad as the leader of the United States, President Donald Trump had multiple opportunities to illustrate his support of the U.S.’s allies and to show his willingness to stand up to Russia.
Yet each time, he took the opposite approach.
At one point, his top adviser Gary Cohn suggested to reporters aboard Air Force One that Trump might be open to lifting NATO sanctions on Russia. The sanctions were imposed after Russia annexed Ukrainian territory, an action that also prompted the G7 leaders to kick Russia out of the group.
“The discussion on sanctions and Russia came up at NATO tonight. It was a pretty broad discussion with a lot of NATO talking about Russian Sanctions,” Cohn said, per press pool reports. Asked about the U.S. position on Russian sanctions, he added, “I think the president is looking at it.”
Cohn refused to either confirm or deny that Trump was considering lifting Russian sanctions, leaving the door open. Trump has floated the possibility of lifting the sanctions before, though his stance remains ambiguous: another senior administration official told the Wall Street Journal on Thursday that Trump was “leaning” toward keeping the sanctions in place.
In 2017, Trump staff aides asked the State Department to drop sanctions on Russia
The White House explored unilaterally easing sanctions on Russia’s oil industry as recently as late March, arguing that decreased Russian oil production could harm the American economy, according to former U.S. officials.
State Department officials argued successfully that easing those sanctions would actually hurt the U.S. energy sector, according to those former officials and email exchanges reviewed by The Daily Beast.
In one email exchange, a State Department official feels the need to explain that lowering punitive sanctions on the Russian oil industry would be rewarding Moscow—without getting anything from the Kremlin in return.
“Russia continues to occupy Ukraine including Crimea—conditions that led to the sanctions have not changed,” the official wrote.
And that wasn’t the first time Trump national security staffers attempted to end Russia sanctions almost as soon as he took office in early 2017 which alarmed the State Dept. and prompted Congress to specifically write new sanctions rules that Trump couldn't stop all on his own.
In the early weeks of the Trump administration, former Obama administration officials and State Department staffers fought an intense, behind-the-scenes battle to head off efforts by incoming officials to normalize relations with Russia, according to multiple sources familiar with the events.
Unknown to the public at the time, top Trump administration officials, almost as soon as they took office, tasked State Department staffers with developing proposals for the lifting of economic sanctions, the return of diplomatic compounds and other steps to relieve tensions with Moscow.
These efforts to relax or remove punitive measures imposed by President Obama in retaliation for Russia’s intervention in Ukraine and meddling in the 2016 election alarmed some State Department officials, who immediately began lobbying congressional leaders to quickly pass legislation to block the move, the sources said.
“There was serious consideration by the White House to unilaterally rescind the sanctions,” said Dan Fried, a veteran State Department official who served as chief U.S. coordinator for sanctions policy until he retired in late February. He said in the first few weeks of the administration, he received several “panicky” calls from U.S. government officials who told him they had been directed to develop a sanctions-lifting package and imploring him, “Please, my God, can’t you stop this?”
5. Trump tried to water down congressional sanctions against Russia and slow-walked their implementation.
Eventually, the Senate drafted a new sanctions bill, which the Trump Treasury Dept. had attempted to water down.
A top Treasury Department official met with House leadership staffers and committee aides last Thursday to discuss changing a key component of the Senate bill which was sent to the House for approval after a procedural violation stalled it for weeks, two congressional aides with knowledge of the meeting told The Daily Beast.
The official, John E. Smith, the director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control and a career official in the Treasury Department, which oversees the implementation of foreign sanctions, met last Thursday with staff from the offices of House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, as well as the Foreign Affairs and Financial Services committees.
Representatives for Pelosi, McCarthy and Hoyer did not respond to requests for comment.
“The net effect of the changes [the Trump administration] wants would certainly weaken one of the legislation.”
Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) stated that he was willing to raise “Holy Hell” with the Trump Administration over these sanctions.
Now, after biting their collective tongues during the opening months of Donald Trump’s presidency, congressional Republicans face an actual legislative test of whether their loyalty to their leader outweighs their fealty to their philosophy.
Leading the forces for the latter is Illinois Congressman Adam Kinzinger, who says in a new interview with The Global Politico that he is prepared to wage a rebellion and raise “holy hell” in the face of new efforts by the White House and its allies to water down a bill enshrining into law tough sanctions on Vladimir Putin’s government. The measure—which passed overwhelmingly in the Senate—ran into trouble last week as Trump allies raised procedural roadblocks and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson complained the bill unduly ties the administration’s hands.
“There will be some holy hell from some of us that would be very upset about this,” says Kinzinger, an up-and-coming member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee who’s emerged as a rare voice inside the GOP willing to publicly critique the president of his own party on foreign policy. A particularly ardent Russia hawk in a party that was until recently filled with them, Kinzinger has taken to tweeting with the hashtag “#russiaisnotourally” in what seems to be a direct challenge to the Twitter-loving president, and he says in the interview: “I think you will see a House that is very, very eager to make sure this thing passes.”
Eventually, the bill passed the Senate on a vote of 97-2, and the House on a vote of 419-3, after additional sanctions on Iran and North Korea were added.
Then when he finally signed the bill Trump added a whining singing statement about it.
Since this bill was first introduced, I have expressed my concerns to Congress about the many ways it improperly encroaches on Executive power, disadvantages American companies, and hurts the interests of our European allies.
...
Still, the bill remains seriously flawed – particularly because it encroaches on the executive branch’s authority to negotiate. Congress could not even negotiate a healthcare bill after seven years of talking. By limiting the Executive’s flexibility, this bill makes it harder for the United States to strike good deals for the American people, and will drive China, Russia, and North Korea much closer together. The Framers of our Constitution put foreign affairs in the hands of the President. This bill will prove the wisdom of that choice.
…
I built a truly great company worth many billions of dollars. That is a big part of the reason I was elected. As President, I can make far better deals with foreign countries than Congress.
After signing the bill Trump blew the deadline for implementing these Congressional sanctions, then delayed them for weeks and shut down the State Dept office that handles sanctions.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has eliminated an office created by Hillary Clinton that coordinates foreign sanctions policy.
Former diplomats and congressional sources said Tillerson had eliminated the office of the Coordinator for Sanctions Policy as part of State Department overhaul, reported Foreign Policy.
The coordinator’s duties will now be overseen by the Policy Planning Office, which had not previously controlled programs or initiatives within the State Department.
Clinton, a secretary of state in the Obama administration, set up the office to coordinate sanctions with the Treasury Department across both Cabinet agencies.
Lawmakers criticized the Trump administration Wednesday for missing an Oct. 1 deadline to implement new sanctions imposed by Congress against Russia for election interference.
The delay “calls into question the Trump administration’s commitment to the sanctions bill,” according to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD).
6. Trump has only implemented sanctions that came from Obama or Congress over Crimea and blocked others over Syria.
All of these sanctions up to this point came either from Obama or Congress, it’s wasn’t until April of 2018 that Trump implemented any sanctions of his own against 7 Russian Oligarchs and 12 Companies in response to the Russian chemical attack in England.
But here’s a thing, those sanctions were implemented under E.O. 13661 and 13662, both of whom were issued by President Obama in 2014 in response to the invasion of Crimea and Ukraine, so even these sanctions were still Obama sanctions.
Other than what Obama already did in response to the Election attacks, Trump still hasn’t implemented any sanctions on Russia related to protecting the nation from future cyber assaults.
In fact, there were also supposed to be more sanctions after that but Trump ordered them to be stopped.
President Donald Trump on Sunday paused his administration’s plans to sanction Russia for its support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the Washington Post reported Monday.
Trump’s move to halt the sanctions, which the Post described as “under serious consideration,” flew in the face of United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley’s comments on CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday that “Secretary Mnuchin will be announcing those [Russian sanctions] on Monday, if he hasn’t already, and they will go directly to any sort of companies that were dealing with equipment related to Assad and chemical weapons use.”
7. Trump was angry that the State Dept. ejected 60 Russians over the nerve-agent attack in Britain.
Apparently, Trump blew his stack that 60 Russian diplomats had been expelled in the wake of the attack on a defected Russian spy and his daughter.
The Post painted a picture of Trump in a stand-off with top foreign policy advisers on moves seen to be anti-Russian: expelling a large number of Russian diplomats following the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal, for example, or allowing the sale of weapons to Ukraine.
“For some reason, when it comes to Russia, he doesn’t hear the praise,” an unnamed senior administration official said, referring to the weapons sales to Ukraine. “Politically speaking, the best thing for him to do is to be tough. . . . On that one issue, he cannot hear the praise.”
The Post described Trump’s rage at discovering, after the fact, that the United States’ expulsion of 60 Russian diplomats following the Skripal poisonings far outnumbered key European allies.
“If you had told me France and Germany were only doing [four], that’s what we would have done,” Trump said, one unnamed official told the Post.
The State Dept had essentially ejected all the Russians they believed we’re actively trying to hunt down former spies and other defectors which were being targeted for retaliation just as Skripal and Alexander Litvinenko had previously been.
All Trump’s done against Russia on his own, without being pushed or forced into it by Congress or circumstances, is allow Ukraine to purchase weapons to defend themselves from Russia.
8. Trump gave Ukraine weapons that they aren’t allowed to use against Russia.
[Updated via comments] Well, actually we’re now giving weapons to Ukraine, but they can't actually be used against Russia.
Nonetheless, given the weapon’s firepower and its political significance against the backdrop of Russia’s ongoing war on Ukraine, Ukrainian officials note that the newly provided Javelins are highly unlikely to be immediately engaged in combat in the war zone. More probably, the Ukrainian Javelin teams would be deployed in the deep rear as an ultimate response to any possible Russian all-out armor offensive, and also as a signal of Washington’s continued support for Ukraine, political observers say.
“Yes, as of today, there are certain limitations introduced regarding Ukraine,” Georgiy Tuka, the country’s deputy minister for occupied territories said on May 6.
“The provision is not to use those systems immediately on the engagement line. But there must be an understanding that this limitation can be lifted at any moment.”
Later the U.S. demand that the Javelins must be kept out of the combat zones was confirmed by U.S. envoy for Ukraine Kurt Volker.
Nevertheless, such a low-key approach drew criticism from some foreign policy experts, who called for more overt support for Ukraine.
“Trump administration should let Ukraine deploy its new anti-tank weapons to the front lines, rather than insisting they be warehoused under lock and key in western Ukraine,” former U.S. Department of Defense official and currently a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council Michael Carpenter commented on his Twitter page on May 3. “What’s the point then?”
Yes, what is the point? We gave Ukraine missiles, but they can't actually use them to shoot at Russians?
9. The fight between U.S. Forces and Pro-Assad Russian Mercenaries wasn’t ordered by Trump
Trump supporters have argued that the key proof of Trump being “tough” on Russia was the fact that 200 Russian mercenaries were killed by U.S. forces in Syria during a 4-hour firefight, and that’s true - but it's not like our forces came after them. U.S. Forces tried to avoid the fight, to contact the Russians and wave them off, but the enemy came for them anyway.
US military officials repeatedly warned about the growing mass of troops. But Russian military officials said they had no control over the fighters assembling near the river – even though US surveillance equipment monitoring radio transmissions had revealed the ground force was speaking in Russian.
The documents described the fighters as a “pro-regime force,” loyal to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. It included some Syrian government soldiers and militias, but US military and intelligence officials have said a majority were private Russian paramilitary mercenaries – and most likely a part of the Wagner Group, a company often used by the Kremlin to carry out objectives that officials do not want to be connected to the Russian government.
“The Russian high command in Syria assured us it was not their people,” defence secretary Jim Mattis told senators in testimony last month. He said he directed Gen Joseph F Dunford Jr, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, “for the force, then, to be annihilated.”
“And it was.”
So the idea that Trump pushed our forces into some deliberate or direct conflict with Russian forces is simply false, especially since Trump declined to implement sanctions on Russia for the aid they’ve been offering to Assad. Besides, it was again President Obama who put our forces into Syria in the first place back in 2015.
At every possible inflection point, rather than leaning forward hard on Russia in order to protect America and it's interests, Trump has been back on his heels not just when he's standing in front of Putin but even when he's alone in the White House where he continues to act as Russia's defense counsel, regurgitating RT talking points to make excuses for their continued attacks on our elections and democracy. They even seriously considered giving up Ambassador McFaul, one of our diplomats - who are supposed to have "diplomatic immunity" — in order to have them interrogated by the FSB.
It’s not just that what he did in Helsinki was disgusting, what he's been doing in Washington is pretty disgusting too.
Tuesday, Jul 24, 2018 · 6:12:20 PM +00:00 · Frank Vyan Walton
I’m just saying, we have ears right?
When asked whether he wanted Trump to win the 2016 election, Putin replied, “Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Because he talked about bringing the U.S.-Russia relationship back to normal.” (Putin apparently ignored the second half of the question, which was whether he directed any Russian officials to help Trump prevail.)
According to the White House transcript of the joint news conference, Putin also said this: “Isn’t it natural to be sympathetic towards a person who is willing to restore the relationship with our country, who wants to work with us?”