Trump Says He Discussed the ‘Russian Hoax’ in Phone Call With Putin
WASHINGTON — President Trump said on Friday that he discussed the “Russian Hoax” with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, in their first conversation since the release of the special counsel’s report, which found that “the Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion.”
In a pair of midday tweets, Mr. Trump said he and Mr. Putin had a “long and very good conversation” in a phone call that lasted over an hour and covered a wide range of issues, including trade, nuclear arms control, Ukraine, North Korea, and Venezuela.
Coming shortly after the release of the report by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, which documented Russian efforts to tilt the election in Mr. Trump’s favor but did not find him or his aides guilty of conspiring with Moscow, the phone call appeared to be an effort to turn the page on the entire affair.
“As I have always said, long before the Witch Hunt started, getting along with Russia, China, and everyone is a good thing, not a bad thing,” Mr. Trump declared, reviving a phrase he has long used about Mr. Putin.
He made no mention of the growing tensions between the United States and Russia over Venezuela, where other senior American officials have accused the Kremlin of intervening to prop up President Nicolás Maduro, whom the Trump administration is working to remove from power. Nor did he mention his administration’s campaign to negotiate a new, more wide-ranging arms-control agreement with Russia.
Mr. Trump also gave no indication that he warned Mr. Putin against Russian interference in the 2020 presidential election, a prospect that has unnerved some of his own top aides, including the recently departed secretary of homeland security, Kirstjen Nielsen.
To the extent that the findings of the Mueller report figured at all in their conversation, Mr. Trump suggested that he dismissed the intense focus on Russian interference as a politically motivated effort by Democrats to discredit his victory in 2016.
The White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, told reporters that the call lasted more than hour, longer than almost any phone call the president has had with a foreign leader. She said the White House would put out a detailed summary of the conversation later Friday.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, before a meeting with Prime Minister Paul Pellegrini of the Slovak Republic, Mr. Trump said he and Mr. Putin discussed a nuclear arms deal that could eventually include China as well as Russia.
He also said the leaders discussed ways to bolster trade between the United States and Russia. The president made no mention of the fact that the United States imposes sanctions on multiple Russia-linked officials as punishment for Russian cyberattacks, as well as it predatory behavior in Ukraine.