Trump backed off from Putin because 'What do you do? End up in a fistfight?’

Trump offered his first detailed account of a dramatic closed-door meeting with Putin

Donald Trump on Wednesday said he had confronted Russian President Vladimir Putin twice about Russian involvement in US presidential elections but the latter flatly denied.

Trump responded to reporters saying, "What do you do? End up in a fistfight?"

Speaking to reporters on Air Force One in Paris, Trump offered his first detailed account of a dramatic closed-door meeting he held with Putin last week in Hamburg, Germany. "I said to him, 'Were you involved in the meddling with the election?'" Trump recalled. "He said, 'Absolutely not. I was not involved.' He was very strong on it. I then said to him, in a totally different way, 'Were you involved with the meddling?' He said, 'I was not - absolutely not,'" reported The New York Times. 

At that point, he said, Putin shifted the conversation to the war in Syria. Trump conceded that he did not ask Putin a question about the election that he wanted to ask, "Who were you really for? Because I can’t believe that he would have been for me. Me. Strong military, strong borders — he doesn’t care about borders — but strong military. Tremendous."

POTUS pressed on the point saying media made up the Russian meddling, "When they say 'treason,' you know what treason is? That’s Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for giving the atomic bomb, Ok?"

The White House put the session off the record, but then released excerpts from Trump’s remarks on Thursday after he asked why reporters had not published his statements. "Whether it’s Russia or anybody else, we can’t let there be even a scintilla of doubt when it comes to an election," he said.

Trump also expressed sympathy for China’s unwillingness to do more to pressure North Korea to curb its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. China, he said, had been locked in conflict with its neighbour for 'many, many centuries.