Trump Presses Putin On Alleged Election Interference (VIDEO)

Everyone wanted it, he did it, and you can bet no one that demanded it is going to be satisfied.

‘He’ is President Trump. And ‘it’ is confronting Russian President Vladimir Putin about allegations of Russian attempts to interfere in the 2016 election. And ‘no one’ refers to the people who demanded the subject be brought up otherwise it would show Trump is a Russian stooge, like Adam Schiff and any random member of the anti/never-Trump resistance.

President Trump confronted Russian President Vladimir Putin about Moscow’s election meddling during a face-to-face meeting in Germany on Friday, according to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

Tillerson, who was present for the more than two-hour meeting, told reporters afterward that Trump opened the conversation by “raising the concerns of the American people regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election.”

Putin denied Russian involvement, Tillerson said, but Trump “pressed” him on the matter “on more than one occasion.”

Trump and Putin agreed to explore a “framework” around which they can work to better understand these types of cyberthreats, the U.S. diplomat said.

“The two leaders agreed that this is a substantial hindrance on the ability of us to move Russian-U.S. relationships forward and agreed to exchange further work 
regarding commitments of noninterference in the affairs of the United States and our democratic process as well as those of other countries,” Tillerson said. “So more work to be done in that regard.”

Still, Tillerson acknowledged that Putin’s insistence that Russia did not interfere would leave the two countries at an impasse, at least for now.

“It’s not clear to me that we will ever come to some agreed-upon resolution of that question between the two nations,” he said. “So the question is, what do we do now?”

Axios expands a bit on the Tillerson quote: “Tillerson called the election hacking an “intractable disagreement” between the two nations.”

Sergei Lavrov told the media that Putin denied involvement and Trump accepted his denial.

Tillerson said “President Putin denied such involvement” but agreed to organize talks “regarding commitments of noninterference in the affairs of the United States and our democratic process.”

But Tillerson’s counterpart, Russian Foreign Minster Sergei Lavrov, said that Trump had heard out Putin’s assurances that Moscow did not run a hacking and disinformation effort, and dismissed the entire investigation into the Russian role.

“President Trump said that this campaign has taken on a rather strange character, because after many months, whenever these accusations are made, no facts are brought,” Lavrov told Russian reporters. “The U.S. president said that he heard clear statements from President Putin about this being untrue, and that he accepted these statements.”

The two presidents, he said, are “looking for mutually beneficial agreements and not trying to act out some confrontation scenarios, not trying to create problems out of nothing.”

Many cattle will be birthed over Lavrov’s statement and one of the first cows was squeezed out of Chuck Schumer:

“President Trump had an obligation to bring up Russia’s interference in our election with Putin, but he has an equal obligation to take the word of our Intelligence Community rather than that of the Russian President,” Schumer said in a statement.

My interpretation of this is that the White House is putting 2016 and the Russia probe behind it and will not let those events stand in the way of working with Russia where possible. That is as it should be. Nations don’t have friends or enemies, nations only have interests.

The post Trump Presses Putin On Alleged Election Interference (VIDEO) appeared first on RedState.