Trump Promises Transparency After Report Claims He Was Hiding Information About Putin Meeting
President Donald Trump said Saturday that he had no objections to the full extent of a 2017 conversation with Russian leader Vladimir Putin being made public.
Trump, who was interviewed by Fox News host Judge Jeanine Pirro, also lashed out at The New York Times and The Washington Post for recent articles concerning Trump and Russia.
On Saturday, the Post ran a story that alleged Trump went to unprecedented lengths of secrecy to prevent even members of his administration from gaining access to notes and records from Trump’s 2017 private meeting with Putin.
On Friday, the Times claimed that after Trump fired former FBI Director James Comey in May 2017, FBI officials began a secret investigation to determine if Trump had ties to Russia. Comey has said that as of that date, there was no evidence linking Trump to Russia.
The reports in the Times and Post both relied heavily on unnamed sources.
The two reports were among the items discussed Saturday when Trump called in to Pirro’s show.
After some preliminary conversation on the Times report, PIrro got to the point.
“I’m going to ask you, are you now or have you ever worked for Russia, Mr. President?” she asked.
“I think it’s the most insulting thing I’ve ever been asked. I think it’s the most insulting article I’ve ever had written. And if you read the article, you’d see that they found absolutely nothing. But the headline of that article, it’s called the failing New York Times for a reason, they’ve gotten me wrong for three years,” Trump said.
“I think it was a great insult. And The New York Times is a disaster as a paper. It’s a very horrible thing they said, and they’ve gone so far that people that weren’t necessarily believers are now big believers, because they said that was a step too far,” Trump said.
Trump then defended his actions, and noted he was battling a nest of FBI officials who opposed his presidency.
“But you look at what’s going on, you know, I fired James Comey. I call him Lying James Comey because he was a terrible liar, and he did a terrible job as the FBI director. Look at what happened with the Hillary Clinton and the e-mails and the Hillary Clinton investigation, one of the biggest screw-ups that anybody’s ever seen as an investigation,” Trump said.
“And what happened after I fired him? Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, his lover, Lisa Page, they did it. And, you know, they’re all gone. Most of those people, many, many people from the top ranks of the FBI, they’ve all been fired or they had to leave are. And they’re all gone. This is what they were talking about. And, obviously, nothing was found,” he said.
Pirro then asked Trump about the Post’s allegations that he kept his conversations with Putin a deep, dark secret.
“Well, Jeanine, I would, I don’t with care. I mean, I had a conversation like every president does. You sit with the president of various countries. I do it with all countries. We had a great conversation. We were talking about Israel and securing Israel and lots of other things. And it was a great conversation,” he said.
“I’m not keeping anything under wraps, I couldn’t care less. I mean, it’s so ridiculous. These people make it up,” he said.
“Think of it, I have a one-on-one meeting with Putin like I do with every other leader. I have many one-on-one — nobody ever says anything about it. But with Putin they say, oh, what did they talk about? We talked about very positive things because — look, we are beating everybody,” Trump said.
“I meet with Putin, and they make a big deal. Anybody could have listened to that meeting, that meeting is up for grabs,” Trump said.
Trump again teed off on the collective allegations that he has connections to Russia.
“You know, the whole Russia thing, it’s a hoax. It’s a terrible hoax. Everybody knows it. And it’s really a shame because it takes time, and it takes effort. And everybody knows there was no collusion whatsoever. They have found no collusion, and they won’t find collusion because I had nothing to do — I was a better candidate than Hillary Clinton. She was a terrible candidate,” Trump said.
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