DA NANG, Vietnam_President Donald Trump lashed out at critics of his meeting Saturday with Russian President Vladimir Putin, during which Trump again declined to press concerns about Russian interference in the election last year.
In a pair of tweets sent Saturday evening, Trump wrote that Russia "can greatly help" U.S. efforts to deal with a number of diplomatic crises, including North Korea's nuclear weapons program.
He also took aim at "the haters and fools out there" who have questioned his efforts to maintain "a good relationship with Russia."
"(They are) always playing politics _ bad for our country," he wrote.
In a third tweet, Trump brought his campaign rival, Democrat Hillary Clinton, into the discussion. He appeared to refer to a 2009 meeting in Geneva between Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Clinton, who was then secretary of State.
According to a Los Angeles Times report published that March, Clinton gave Lavrov an oversized red button labeled "reset," in Russian as a means of illustrating the United States' interest in ending the Bush administration's acrimonious relations with Moscow. But Lavrov needled Clinton by pointing out that because of a translation error by the American staff, the button was labeled not "reset" but "overcharge."
Referencing the "misspelled reset button," Trump suggested that his relationship with Russia merely illustrates how he has succeeded where previous administrations have failed.
After meeting with Putin at a summit in Vietnam on Saturday, Trump said that he believed the former KGB officer's claim that Russia did not interfere in the U.S. presidential election last year.
"Every time he sees me, he says, 'I didn't do that,'" Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One, while traveling between Da Nang and Hanoi during his Asian trip. "And I believe, I really believe that when he tells me that. He means it."
Trump instead lashed out at former U.S. national security officials who sounded the alarm about Russian interference, including former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former FBI Director James Comey, whom Trump fired earlier this year.
"They're political hacks," the president said. "Comey is proven now to be a liar, and he's proven to be a leaker. So you look at that. And you have President Putin very strongly, vehemently says he had nothing to do with that."
Trump's comments came after days of equivocation from the White House over whether Trump would meet with Putin. Both men were in Da Nang to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. Trump said he had "two or three very short conversations" with Putin over the last two days to discuss Syria. They issued a joint statement Saturday promising further cooperation in seeking a political solution to the country's civil war.
U.S. intelligence agencies already have concluded that Russia engaged in a campaign to influence the election, hacking into Democratic emails that later were leaked and using a variety of online tools to spread fake news and other propaganda.
