President Donald Trump brought up Russian interference in the 2016 campaign with Russian President Vladimir Putin during their much-anticipated meeting on Friday at the G20 meeting in Germany, according to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. After Putin denied that Russia ran a covert operation to subvert the US election, Trump agreed to “move forward” and even to collaborate on cybersecurity, said Tillerson, who had been in the room. But Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who also attended the meeting, claimed that Trump accepted Putin’s assertion that Russia didn’t meddle in the election.
[…]
US intelligence agencies agree that Putin oversaw a concerted Russian effort to interfere in the 2016 election in order to help Trump defeat Hillary Clinton. Russian-backed hackers broke into email accounts of Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign officials and then used Wikileaks to release emails designed to damage Clinton, the agencies concluded. Russians also created fake social media accounts to support Trump’s messaging and probed local election systems in at least 21 states, US officials say.
Trump has waffled on whether he accepts these conclusions, even as he faults former President Barack Obama for failing to do more to prevent Russian hacking.
Trump Raises Russian Interference With Putin
But Says It’s Time to Move On
Mother Jones
Now the spin’s in and Putin denies
interference… wow, what a surprise!
With the POTUS on board
and in perfect accord,
he rejects his own intel for lies.
© 2017 Susan Eckenrode