United States senators to grill Mike Pompeo on Trump-Putin Helsinki meeting

Trump spent last week trying to reassure the country that he accepts that the longtime foe interfered in the 2016 election, despite his public undermining of US intelligence agencies in Helsinki while standing alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The issue of election meddling hung over last week’s summit in Helsinki, with Trump during a news conference giving credence to Putin’s denials of Russian interference despite the findings of the US intelligence community.

Putin has slammed the US opposition to Trump as “pathetic, worthless people” who are willing to sacrifice Russian-US ties for their own ambitions. From the moment Trump’s news conference alongside Putin ended on July 16, Republican and Democrats have found common ground in efforts to rein in the president’s apparent desire to forge better ties with Russian Federation without confronting Moscow over election meddling. “So I think it’s likely that when he said ‘Yes, I did, ‘ that he was just responding to the first part of my question and perhaps didn’t hear the second part”.

The DETER Act would make sanctions more automatic and aim to punish Russia’s finance, energy, defense and other sectors.

That was followed by seven days of non-stop flip-flopping over whether he believed Russian Federation had meddled in the 2016 U.S. elections, after his intelligence agencies confirmed it.

The investigation is “legitimate”, 54 percent of voters say, while 40 percent say it is a “witch hunt”. And overall, 37 percent of USA adults think Russia’s meddling transformed the 2016 election results. Fifty-seven percent of respondents said they anticipate more meddling in November.

The Gallup Poll showed Trump’s approval rating at 42 percent for the sixth quarter of his administration. In contrast, most Republicans – 58 percent – appear hopeful that Russian Federation will not interfere in USA elections this fall.

The U.S. and Russian Federation share the blame for the relationship between the two countries, 54 percent of U.S. voters say, while 38 percent say Russian Federation is to blame and 4 percent say the U.S.is. “We haven’t seen a lot of movement”. The Hill and the HarrisX polling company run the American Barometer poll.

Trump answered: “Putin said it’s not Russian Federation”.

Putin himself acknowledged he wanted Trump to win the 2016 presidential race during a joint news conference with Trump after their July 16 summit in Helsinki.

Russia’s ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, was also cautious on Friday about the prospects of a new summit, saying only that Moscow was ready to discuss the proposal. But that criticism ignored the fact that law enforcement officials were following a general policy not to name Americans, even referring to Trump only as “Candidate #1” in renewal applications despite noting that he was now the president-elect and then the president. “I said the word “would” instead of “wouldn’t”…sort of a double negative”, Trump explained.

Marist/NPR/PBS NewsHour conducted phone interviews with 1,061 adults from July 19-22 and the overall poll had a margin of error of 3.6 percentage points.