Trump backs Putin on election meddling at summit, stirs fierce criticism

HELSINKI, July 16 (Reuters) - Standing side by side with Vladimir Putin, U.S. President Donald Trump refused on Monday to blame the Russian leader for meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, casting doubt on the findings of his own intelligence agencies and sparking a storm of criticism at home.

Although he faced pressure from critics, allied countries and even his own staff to take a tough line, Trump spoke not a single disparaging word in public about Moscow on any of the issues that have brought relations between the two powers to the lowest ebb since the Cold War.

Instead, he denounced the "stupidity" of his own country's policies, especially the decision to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election.

But Republican Senator Rand Paul defended Trump, telling CNN: "Absolutely I'm with the president on this; the (U.S.) intelligence community was full of biased people."

Standing side by side with Vladimir Putin, U.S. President Donald Trump refused on Monday to blame the Russian leader for meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, casting doubt on the findings of his own intelligence agencies and sparking a storm of criticism at home.

That is a complete lie except for the storm of criticism. No one should, though many have, fall for the word conflation game that the left and their media allies have concocted to conflate meddling with collusion. It's the same word conflation game they played to conflate climate change with global warming.

The best way to deal with this is by watching the press conference or going to the transcript which I'll do here with the NPR transcript.

First, President Trump was forceful in stating that there was no collusion.

TRUMP: Well, I'm going to let the president answer the second part of that question. But, as you know, the whole concept of that came up perhaps a little bit before but it came out as a reason why the Democrats lost an election, which frankly, they should have been able to win because the electoral college is much more advantageous for Democrats, as you know, than it is to Republicans. We won the Electoral College by a lot. 306 to 223, I believe.

And that was a well fought, that was a well fought battle. We did a great job. And frankly, I'm going to let the president speak to the second part of your question. But just to say it one time again and I say it all the time, there was no collusion. I didn't know the president.

There was nobody to collude with. There was no collusion with the campaign and every time you hear all of these you know 12 and 14 - stuff that has nothing to do and frankly they admit - these are not people involved in the campaign.

But to the average reader out there, they're saying well maybe that does. It doesn't. And even the people involved, some perhaps told mis-stories or in one case the FBI said there was no lie. There was no lie. Somebody else said there was. We ran a brilliant campaign and that's why I'm president. Thank you.

Again, meddling conflated with collusion is the game the left and the media play, but not the President. He's careful in saying collusion.

Now we come to the supposed backing of Putin over the intelligence agencies. What the President did was turn the question around to first get out the information that is being obscured including the question of Hillary's still missing 33,000 emails, followed by him saying he doesn't see why Russia would interfere but he cannot know for sure without all the information. So he's baiting the Deep State by saying that he believes his intelligence agencies, but Putin denied it, and he cannot know for sure without everything. He put them on the spot to produce the missing elements, or, as I hope is the case from some of the Q postings, he's got those missing elements and he's pulling these clymers out into the open. Finally, to put the cherry on top, Trump called Mueller and Rosenstein's bluff on the 12 newly indicted Russians by saying Putin is offering to have them come to Russia to investigate.

TRUMP: So let me just say that we have two thoughts. You have groups that are wondering why the FBI never took the server. Why haven't they taken the server? Why was the FBI told to leave the office of the Democratic National Committee?

I've been wondering that. I've been asking that for months and months and I've been tweeting it out and calling it out on social media. Where is the server? I want to know where is the server and what is the server saying?

With that being said, all I can do is ask the question.

My people came to me, Dan Coates, 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. But I really do want to see the server but I have, I have confidence in both parties.

I really believe that this will probably go on for a while but I don't think it can go on without finding out what happened to the server. What happened to the servers of the Pakistani gentleman that worked on the DNC?

Where are those servers? They're missing. Where are they? What happened to Hillary Clinton's emails? 33,000 emails gone, just gone. I think in Russia they wouldn't be gone so easily.

I think it's a disgrace that we can't get Hillary Clinton's thirty three thousand e-mails.

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 and what he did is an incredible offer.

He offered to have the people working on the case come and work with their investigators, with respect to the 12 people. I think that's an incredible offer. Ok? Thank you.

It's a pretty different story when you get the unfiltered account of the event. That's not supposed to be the case, but it sadly is when you have a horribly biased media as we have.

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