White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told NBC News on Friday afternoon that the summit is “still on”.
A United States grand jury charged 12 Russian “intelligence officers” with breaching the Democratic party’s computer networks in an election hacking case, Reuters reported.
Trump said Friday that he’ll bring up the election interference he speaks with Putin, but that he doesn’t expect an answer.
In a subsequent tweet, Trump questioned why the Federal Bureau of Investigation didn’t take possession of the Democratic National Committee server that was hacked by the Russians and appeared to insinuate that an unsubstantiated and unexplained conspiracy involving the “Deep State”.
“The Russian government attacked our democracy in 2016, and the DNC was a primary target of that attack”, he wrote.
“If we could develop a relationship, which is good for Russian Federation, good for us, good for everybody – that would be great”, Trump said of a USA relationship with Russian Federation. And John McCain, a leading Republican senator and Trump critic, said Trump must hold Putin accountable or not proceed with the meeting.
Trump plans to meet one-on-one with Putin at the start of their first formal summit talks in Helsinki, Finland, before allowing other aides to participate.
“We need to stay on the course that President Trump’s policies are – rebuild American military strength, strengthen North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, get NATO to get spend money on their own defense, and stop having Europe make these multi-billion dollar oil and gas deals with Russian Federation”.
A sanctions bill passed a year ago, known as the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, gave Congress further powers to review and potentially block any efforts by the White House to dilute commerce restrictions on Russian Federation.
A spokeswoman for House Speaker Paul Ryan, asked whether Trump should meet one-on-one with Putin, responded by saying that “we know Russian Federation meddled in our elections and we’re glad these hackers are being held to account”. That is not happening, the White House said.
“The concern is that this is not just noise to disregard, because perception is reality and this president may be with us for another six years”, the senior source said. “This is consistent with what we have been saying all along”. “American diplomats have already begun to say that the United Nations should be shut down because it’s not needed.Trump also tries to destroy the WTO and isn’t sure about necessity of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation”. No Americans are involved.