ABC News(WASHINGTON) — Responding to the way President Donald Trump conducted himself during a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee said Trump “acts like he’s compromised” by the Kremlin.
“I think there’s no ignoring the fact that, for whatever reason, this president acts like he’s compromised,” Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., told ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos Sunday on This Week. “There is simply no other way to explain why he would side with this Kremlin — a former KGB officer — rather than his own intelligence agencies.”
Trump met with Putin privately for more than two hours in Helsinki on Monday, with only their interpreters present. The two leaders held a joint press conference later that day in which Trump appeared to accept what he called Putin’s “strong” and “powerful” denials of Russian government interference in the 2016 presidential election.
During the press conference, Trump said, “My people came to me — Dan Coats came to me and some others — they said they think it’s Russia. I have President Putin. He just said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be.”
On Tuesday, Trump said he needed to “clarify” one word he said during the press conference.
“In a key sentence in my remarks, I said the word ‘would’ instead of ‘wouldn’t,'” Trump told the cameras during a meeting with members of Congress in the Roosevelt Room. “The sentence should have been: I don’t see any reason why I wouldn’t — or why it wouldn’t be Russia. So just to repeat it, I said the word ‘would’ instead of ‘wouldn’t.'”
“I think that probably clarifies things pretty good by itself,” he added.
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