Trump: Every time Putin sees me he says, 'I didn't do that'
Iran Press TV
Sat Nov 11, 2017 02:18PM
US President Donald Trump says his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin felt "insulted" for repeatedly being asked about the alleged Russian meddling into the 2016 American presidential election.
"Every time he sees me he says, 'I didn't do that,' and I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it," Trump said on Saturday. .
Trump, who had "two or three" brief conversations with Putin at the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) summit in Vietnam, told reporters that he is not going to "argue" with Putin about the allegations anymore.
"He said he didn't meddle," Trump said "He said he didn't meddle. I asked him again. You can only ask so many times."
He said he believed Putin was "very insulted by it, which is not a good thing for our country."
Trump also suggested that the discrepancies between Moscow and US officials are not worth debating, while there are many other security issues that should be discussed. "You are not going to get into an argument, you are going to start talking about Syria and the Ukraine."
Russia, meanwhile, said Trump did not bring up the issue during brief talks he had with Putin in Vietnam.
Putin's spokesman Dmitri Peskov said, "No" when asked by CNN that if the two leaders discussed the alleged Russian meddling on the sidelines of the summit.
Peskov said the election interference issue did not come up when the two leaders spoke.
Putin earlier described the allegations of interference in the US election through contacting Trump's campaign as "absurd".
"Everything about the so-called Russian dossier in the US is a manifestation of continuing domestic political struggle," Putin told reporters.
American intelligence agencies claim that Russia interfered last year in the US presidential election to try to help Trump. The US justice department that is investigating the allegations has also already named several key former aides of Trump's campaign in connection with the inquiry.
While Trump is on his Asia tour, US Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller, who is leading a federal investigation into the issue, has got closer to Trump'sinner circle.
George Papadopoulos, former foreign policy adviser, has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia while working on Trump's campaign. Another former adviser to Trump's election campaign, Carter Page, admitted last week that he met with Russian officials during a trip to Moscow in 2016.
He acknowledged that he had sent an email to at least one Trump campaign aide shortly after the trip, describing his conversations with government officials, legislators and business executives during his time in Moscow.
Page, however, downplayed the significance of the meetings in an interview with The New York Times, saying, "I had a very brief hello to a couple of people."
Trump once again described the allegations are a conspiracy invented by Democrats to distract from their electoral losses, saying "That whole thing was set up by the Democrats." He even suggested that investigators looking into his campaign aides' alleged relations with Russian officials, were better off probing elsewhere.
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