In an extraordinary embrace of a longtime US enemy, US President Donald Trump openly questioned his own intelligence agencies’ firm finding that Russia meddled in the 2016 US presidential election to his benefit, seeming to accept Russian President Vladimir Putin’s insistence that Moscow’s hands were clean.
The reaction back home was immediate and visceral, among fellow Republican lawmakers as well as usual Trump critics.
“Shameful,” “weak” and “disgraceful” were a few of the comments.
Photo: AFP
Makes the US “look like a pushover,” US Senator Bob Corker said.
Trump’s meeting with Putin in Helsinki was his first time sharing the international stage with a man that he has described as an important US competitor — but whom he has also praised as a strong, effective leader.
His remarks, siding with a foe on foreign soil over his own government, was a stark illustration of Trump’s willingness to upend decades of US foreign policy and rattle Western allies in service of his political concerns. A wary and robust stance toward Russia has been a bedrock of his party’s world view, but Trump made it clear he feels that any firm acknowledgement of Russia’s involvement would undermine the legitimacy of his election.
Alongside Putin, Trump steered clear of any confrontation with the Russian, going so far as to question US intelligence and last week’s federal indictments that accused 12 Russians of hacking into Democratic e-mail accounts to hurt US presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2016.
“I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today,” Trump said. “He just said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be.”
His skepticism drew a quick formal statement — almost a rebuttal — from US Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats.
“We have been clear in our assessments of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and their ongoing, pervasive efforts to undermine our democracy, and we will continue to provide unvarnished and objective intelligence in support of our national security,” Coats said.
Fellow Republican politicians have generally stuck with Trump during a year and a half of turmoil, but he was assailed as seldom before as he returned home on Monday night from what he had hoped would be a proud summit with Putin.
US Senator John McCain of Arizona was most outspoken, declaring that Trump made a “conscious choice to defend a tyrant” and achieved “one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory.”
US House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, who rarely criticizes Trump, stressed there was “no question” that Russia had interfered.
Even staunch Trump backer Newt Gingrich, the former US House of Representatives speaker, called Trump’s comments “the most serious mistake of his presidency” and said they “must be corrected — immediately.”
As he flew home to Washington aboard Air Force One, Trump tried to clarify his position via a tweet, saying: “As I said today and many times before, ‘I have GREAT confidence in MY intelligence people.’ However, I also recognize that in order to build a brighter future, we cannot exclusively focus on the past — as the world’s two largest nuclear powers, we must get along!”
In their totality, Trump’s remarks amounted to an unprecedented embrace of a man who for years has been isolated by the US and Western allies for actions in Ukraine, Syria and beyond. The meeting came at the end of an extraordinary trip to Europe in which Trump had already berated allies, questioned the value of the NATO alliance and demeaned leaders including Germany’s Angela Merkel and Britain’s Theresa May.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver