President Trump in an interview broadcast early Sunday said he has “low expectations” for a highly anticipated summit on Monday with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“I go in with low expectations,” Trump told CBS News. “I’m not going with high expectations.”
“I’ll let you know after the meeting,” he answered when asked about his goals. “I think it’s a good thing to meet. I do believe in meetings. … Nothing bad is going to come out of it, and maybe some good will come out.”
{mosads}Trump also said he may ask Putin when they meet in Helsinki about extraditing the 12 Russian agents charged on Friday with hacking the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in 2016 and dispersing the documents online.
“I hadn’t thought of that. But I certainly, I’ll be asking about it. But again, this was during the Obama administration. They were doing whatever it was during the Obama administration.”
Trump on Saturday also blamed the Obama administration for Russia’s election meddling.
“The stories you heard about the 12 Russians yesterday took place during the Obama Administration, not the Trump Administration,” the president tweeted from Scotland. “Why didn’t they do something about it, especially when it was reported that President Obama was informed by the FBI in September, before the Election?”
“I heard that they were trying, or people were trying, to hack into the RNC too,” the president added in his interview with CBS News. “The Republican National Committee. But we had much better defenses. … I think the DNC should be ashamed of themselves for allowing themselves to be hacked. They had bad defenses and they were able to be hacked.”
The president, who has wavered on the issue of Russia’s election interference, has promised repeatedly to press Putin on the issue, but suggested that there is not much he can do to deter it.
“I don’t think you’ll have any ‘Gee, I did it, I did it, you got me.’ There won’t be a Perry Mason here,” Trump said at a press conference on Friday with British Prime Minister Theresa May.
— This report was updated at 8:03 a.m.