Russian President Vladimir Putin came to Donald Trump defense Tuesday, rejecting allegations concerning the president-elect’s past behavior in a Moscow hotel room as a crude effort by the current White House to undermine Mr. Trump’s legitimacy before his administration even begins.
Speaking at a news conference in Moscow, the Russian president described a dossier containing allegations involving Mr. Trump as a parting shot from the Obama administration meant to muddle the incoming president’s term in office on the eve of his inauguration.
“In my opinion, there are several goals, some are obvious. The first is to undermine the legitimacy of the elected president of the United States. Incidentally, in this connection I would like to note that — whether people who do it want it or don’t want — they greatly damage U.S. interests,” Mr. Putin said, as reported by Sputnik, a state-owned media website.
“The second goal is to tie the hands [and] legs of the newly-elect president related to the implementation of his pre-election campaign’s promises to the American people and the international community,” Mr. Putin added, according to Sputnik.
Mr. Putin’s comments in defense of his soon-to-be American counterpart came days after a dossier containing perverse, unsubstantiated allegations involving Mr. Trump, Russian sex workers and a Moscow hotel room were leaked by news outlets with roughly a week until his inauguration.
“It’s all fake news. It’s phony stuff. It didn’t happen,” Mr. Trump said at press conference Wednesday where he refuted the contents of the dossier while denouncing members of the media who reported on it.
Weighing in nearly a week later, Mr. Putin said the accusations concerning Mr. Trump certainly seem bogus in his own opinion.
“This is a mature person who had been organizing beauty pageants for many years. He got to be around the most gorgeous women in the world. I doubt he would ever rush to a hotel to spend time with the local women of loose morals,” the Russian president said with respect to Mr. Trump at Tuesday’s presser, Sputnik reported.
“Prostitution is an ugly social phenomenon,” Mr. Putin added. “But people who order such fakes which are now used against the elected president of the United States, fabricate information and use it in the political struggle, they are worse than prostitutes, they have no moral limits.”
Mr. Trump last week said the dossier was created by “sick people” opposed to his campaign, and later took to Twitter to question whether outgoing CIA Director John Brennan was responsible for leaking it to the press.
According to Mr. Putin, the leak may very well be a single facet of a multi-pronged effort waged by the Obama administration toward achieving the greater goal of removing Mr. Trump soon after he takes office.
“It seems that they trained for this in Kiev and now are ready to organize a ’Maidan’ in Washington not to let Trump assume office,” Mr. Putin said Tuesday, referring to the 2014 Ukrainian protests that forced the ouster of the nation’s pro-Russian leader, Viktor Yanukovych, and were subsequently blamed by Moscow as being U.S.-orchestrated.
Mr. Trump has denied being in cahoots with the Russian president, whom the U.S. intelligence community holds responsible for directing an influence campaign waged at interfering in the White House race last November prior to the president-elect’s victory.
“If Putin likes Donald Trump, guess what, folks? That’s called an asset, not a liability,” Mr. Trump insisted at last week’s press conference.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.