AP, Washington :
President Trump suggested Tuesday that he believes the Russian government has tired of his leadership and now may attempt to interfere in the 2018 midterm elections to help the Democrats.
The president made that assertion in a tweet that ignored the evidence presented by his own intelligence services that Russia had intervened in the 2016 election in his behalf.
Faced with widespread criticism from members of his own party over his apparent acquiescence to Vladimir Putin’s claims that Moscow had not meddled in the 2016 election, Trump has sought in recent days to portray himself as tough on the Russian leader.
“There has never been a president as tough on Russia as I have been,” Trump said last Wednesday at a Cabinet meeting at the White House. “I think President Putin knows that better than anyone, certainly a lot better than the media. He understands it, and he’s not happy about it, and he shouldn’t be happy about it.”
Trump also insisted that he simply misspoke when he stated at a press conference with Putin in Helsinki that he didn’t believe Russia had meddled in the 2016 race.
At the same time, Trump has also sought to portray his summit with Putin in a positive light.
In Helsinki, Putin himself was asked if he had wanted Trump to win in 2016 and whether he had personally directed his own intelligence officers to try to hurt Hillary Clinton’s candidacy.
“Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Because he talked about bringing the U.S.-Russia relationship back to normal,” Putin said, responding to the first part of the question and ignoring the latter half.
On July 13, the U.S. Justice Department indicted 12 Russian officials for their attempts to interfere with the presidential election. U.S. intelligence agencies and the Senate have been unanimous in their findings that Russia sought to aid Trump’s presidential bid in 2016.
Shortly after Trump’s appearance with Putin in Helsinki, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats issued an unusual statement reaffirming his view that Russia’s election attacks are already ongoing – something Trump’s post on Tuesday did not.
“We have been clear in our assessments of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and their ongoing, pervasive efforts to undermine our democracy,” Coats said.
On Tuesday, American intelligence chiefs warned the Senate Intelligence Committee that Russia appears to be preparing to repeat in the 2018 midterm elections the same full-on chicanery it unleashed in 2016: hacking, leaking, social media manipulation and possibly more. Then on Friday, Robert Mueller, the special counsel, announced the indictments of 13 Russians and three companies, run by a businessman with close Kremlin ties, laying out in astonishing detail a three-year scheme to use social media to attack Hillary Clinton, boost Donald Trump and sow discord.
Most Americans are understandably shocked by what they view as an unprecedented attack on our political system. But intelligence veterans, and scholars who have studied covert operations, have a different, and quite revealing, view.
