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 accused of divulging top secret intelligence to Russians
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."
Trump says time to work 'constructively' with Russia
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?"