Trump, Putin meet at sidelines of SE Asia meeting; Tump blasts his own intel

POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Friday, February 13, 2026 18:07
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SIGNYM

Sunday, November 12, 2017 3:49 AM

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Trump "Chats Amicably" With Putin, Sides With Russia Over "Election Interference"

All eyes were on Trump and Putin again as the two leaders bumped into each other at the APEC meeting on Saturday. They patted each other on the back several times, and Putin whispered something in Trump’s ear. The US leader listened attentively leaving reporters to guess what the two discussed.

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Shortly after, President Trump again dismissed allegations of Russian meddling in last year’s U.S. election, following his first brief meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin at the APEC conference after their first encounter in July. Speaking to reporters on Air Force One, Trump said that he believes Vladimir Putin's denials about election meddling - over allegations raised by US intel agencies including the CIA, NSA, and FBI which claim that Russia actively worked to meddle in the election - which are an “artificial Democratic hit job” and did not want to press further because he thinks the U.S. and Russia can work together on issues that include North Korea, Syria and Ukraine. He also said that interference talk "gets in the way and that’s a shame," because people will die because of it.

Trump said Putin had told him again that he hadn’t meddled in the election: “I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it,” Trump said of the accusations.

“I think he’s very insulted by it, which is not a good thing for our country.” Trump repeated that “there was no collusion, everybody knows there was no collusion” and called it a "pure hit job" and said that “rhis is really an artificial barrier that’s put in front of us for solving problems with Russia. I think it’s a shame that something like can destroy a very important potential relationship between two countries that are very important countries. Russia could really help us.”

Putin likewise dismissed suggestions Russia influenced the elections through political advertising. Tech companies, including Facebook, have said some Russian-bought political content spread on their platforms around the time of the election. “There is no confirmation of our mass media meddling in election campaigns – and there can’t be any,” Putin said.

Trump also said he didn’t speak to Putin about North Korea during APEC summit, and was focused on Syria and Ukraine.

While there was no official meeting between the two presidents scheduled, Trump said he and Putin spoke at picture- taking last night and at a roundtable today. “We spoke intermittently.” Scheduling and unspecified protocol issues were to blame for the fact that a mooted sit-down meeting with Trump did not happen in Danang, Putin said.

They were also seen chatting amicably as they walked to the position where the traditional APEC summit photo was being taken at a viewpoint looking over the South China Sea.

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“We did it very quickly,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One after leaving the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in the resort of Danang for Hanoi, Vietnam’s capital. “We seem to have a very good feeling for each other, a good relationship considering we don’t know each other well.”

Talking to journalists on Saturday after the meeting, Putin said that the absence of a separate, official meeting with the US president at the summit further proves that there is an ongoing crisis in relations between the two nations. “It means that US-Russia relations are still in a state of crisis." Moscow is, however, ready “to turn the page and move on, look into the future and solve problems important both to the people of the US and Russia,” including issues within the “sphere of security, and of economic interaction, which has dropped to virtually zero.”

Asked whether he experienced Trump’s trademark "intense handshake" habit,

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