Trump: Putin preferred Clinton in the White House

President Trump said Wednesday that Russian President Vladimir Putin would have been happier with his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, in the White House.

“If Hillary had won, our military would be decimated. Our energy would be much more expensive. That’s what Putin doesn’t like about me,” Trump said in an interview with Christian Broadcasting Network founder Pat Robertson.

“And that’s why I say, why would he want me? Because from day one I wanted a strong military — he doesn’t want to see that,” the president added.

Trump’s comments come a day after emails reported by the New York Times showed Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., agreeing to a 2016 meeting where he was promised damaging information on Clinton as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”

{mosads}In the CBN interview, Trump claimed Putin “probably” did not want him to become president because of his push to expand U.S. oil and gas production, which he said could hurt Russian energy exports.

“So what I keep hearing about that he would have rather had Trump, I think ‘probably not,’” he said. 

Trump appeared to be push back on the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia meddled in the 2016 election to help him and hurt Clinton. 

The president has not definitively accepted that conclusion. He has said that Russia, but also other countries, may have been responsible for hacking emails from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and exposing them to the public. 

The comments came after Trump met Putin for the first time as president last week in the Group of 20 summit in Germany. The president’s advisers have said he pushed the Russian leader on hacking.