FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

News

Trump's Putin press conference just made Republicans' lives way harder

He gave Democrats something else to hammer him and Republicans on — and created a situation where Republicans won’t be able to clap back.

The president of Russia and the president of the United States holding a press conference is not unusual. Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama all took questions alngside their Russian counterparts at some point in their presidencies.

What made Trump and Putin’s joint press conference Monday in Helsinki so unusual was Trump's refusal to acknowledge any Russian interference in the 2016 election, seeming to side with Putin instead of the conclusions of 17 intelligence agencies, his own director of National Intelligence, the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Justice Department.

Advertisement

And asked if he would denounce what happened in 2016 and warn Putin to never do it again, Trump, well, didn’t. Instead, he responded, “My people came to me, Dan Coats [the Director of National Intelligence] 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.”

Coats later put out his own statement emphasizing Russia's involvement.

"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.

Republicans back in America were also quick to distance themselves from Trump's remarks.

“There is no question that Russia interfered in our election and continues attempts to undermine democracy here and around the world," Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said in a statement. "The president must appreciate that Russia is not our ally. There is no moral equivalence between the United States and Russia, which remains hostile to our most basic values and ideals.”

Perhaps the president realized he'd caused a problem for Republicans back home. In a tweet after the press conference, he reiterated how he has “GREAT confidence” in his intelligence people.

But the fact remains that the President of the United States equated the findings of U.S. government officials and the intelligence community with what President Putin told him. In doing so, he probably didn’t change much for himself domestically — his feelings about the investigation into Russian efforts to undermine the election are pretty clear.

But with respect to the election cycle, he gave Democrats something else to hammer him and Republicans on — and created a situation where Republicans won’t be able to clap back.

This segment originally aired July 16, 2018 on VICE News Tonight on HBO.

Cover image: U.S. President Donald Trump, left, and Vladimir Putin, Russia's president, prepare to leave following a news conference in Helsinki, Finland, on Monday, July 16, 2018. Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg via Getty Images.