Trump, Putin Deny Collusion In Joint Press Conference From Helsinki: Full Highlights

It went very well.

That’s Donald Trump’s assessment of how things went at Monday’s summit in Helsinki with Vladimir Putin.

This was, of course, farcical in the extreme. Trump spent the last 48 hours attempting to discredit the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment of Russia’s efforts to meddle in the 2016 election by tweeting about “Crooked Hillary”, “rigged witch hunts”, “fake news” and FBI conspiracies. He also called the U.S. media the “enemy of the people” while en route to Finland.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1018731223890481153

There was no indication that Trump was prepared to reconsider the relative wisdom of taking this meeting with Putin in light of the new indictments handed down on Friday by the Department of Justice against 12 Russian operatives who interfered in the 2016 election.

In the joint press conference with Putin following the summit, Trump was keen on blaming the special counsel probe for frayed relations with Moscow. He explicitly said the U.S. is partly to blame:

 

“I addressed the issue of Russian meddling in the U.S. elections”, Trump said, before adding that Putin “has an interesting idea.”

 

That’s likely an allusion to the “impenetrable cyber unit” Trump mentioned last year. You’ll recall the following tweet:

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/884016887692234753

“Russia can work with the U.S. to analyze materializes through a cyber group”, Putin said, an apparent reference to the same “unit”.

That is clearly ridiculous. The idea that the U.S. would turn over intelligence about Russian meddling in an election to Russia for the purposes of letting the Kremlin “analyze” it, is so laughable that it’s barely worth mentioning.

Asked how he can reconcile the U.S. intelligence community’s unanimous conclusions with Putin’s claims, Trump brought up “the server” again.

He went on to reiterate the “no collusion” narrative literally dozens of times. One reporter pressed Trump and Putin, asking, specifically, “why Americans should believe that Russia did not meddle in the 2016 elections given the evidence presented?”

“The main thing we emphasized ‘zero collusion'”, Trump responded, before claiming the entire Russian collusion story was (and still is), an excuse for an election loss on the part of the Democrats, who he maligned as obstructionists. He went on to cite his Electoral College win, before saying the following:

Just to say it one more time, and I say it all the time, there was no collusion. I never knew [Putin]. There was nobody to collude with. We ran a brilliant campaign and that’s why I’m President.

The same reporter asked if Russia would extradite the accused Russians. To that, Putin offered a long-winded response that was so convoluted as to be impossible to parse. Amusingly, he seemed to allude to possible collusion between nefarious Russians and the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Putin mentioned Robert Mueller by name on numbers occasions. “Options abound”, when it comes to Kremlin cooperation with the special counsel probe, Putin concluded.

The press conference subsequently descended into absolute farce, with Putin explaining that when it comes to “dossiers”, he’s an expert. He also mentioned George Soros and again implored Washington to send him the

Asked specifically by a reporter whether the Russian government has “compromising material on President Trump and his family,” Putin said this:

Yeah, I did hear these rumors that we collected compromising material on Mr. Trump when he was in Moscow. When he was a private citizen, I didn’t even know he was in Moscow. Do you think we try to collect compromising material on each and every private individual who visits Moscow?

Please, just disregard this issue and don’t think about it anymore.

Trump closed the press conference with this:

If anybody watched the Peter Strzok testimony the other day, it was a total witch hunt. Thank you very much everybody.

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7 thoughts on “Trump, Putin Deny Collusion In Joint Press Conference From Helsinki: Full Highlights

  1. “If anybody watched the Peter Strzok testimony the other day, it was a total witch hunt.”
    For once in his life, Trump finally said something truthful.

  2. Tweet from former CIA director John O. Brennan:

    Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the threshold of “high crimes & misdemeanors.” It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots: Where are you???

    11:52 AM – Jul 16, 2018
    73.4K
    51.3K people are talking about this

  3. It’s hard to believe that somebody who thinks so deeply about financial material could accidentally make the following….err….mistakes:

    “…..who interfered in the 2016 election.” Even if the indictments contained just the remotest hint of evidence – which they don’t – you might be overlooking that whole Rule of Law / innocent-until-proven-guilty thing. Or perhaps those old-fashioned standards don’t apply in a witch-hunt?
    “the U.S. intelligence community’s unanimous conclusions”. I lose track, but at last count the ‘US Intelligence Community’ was comprised of something like 20 agencies and over 1200 other organizations (many in the private sector). Of that number, just four have come out front and centre with allegations (albeit unproven). Just pausing to check the dictionary definition of ‘unanimous’……

    1. You fucking fool. Indictment clearly indicates ample evidence to bring to trial. Why do you think you rate seeing such evidence at this time — so you can personally approve the evidence validates the crime?

      Many people so much smarter than you will ever be have completed a deep investigation for months and months and concur an arrest and trial is appropriate.

      The more you run your stupid mouth, the more stupid we see you are. I bet that is fucking unanimous!

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