President Trump says he’s heading into his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin with “low expectations” and hasn’t thought of asking for the extradition of a dozen Russian military officers newly accused of interfering in the 2016 presidential election.
Asked what his goal is for the Monday summit, Mr. Trump said: “I’ll let you know after the meeting.”
He said meeting with people like North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and Chinese President Xi Jinping is a good thing.
“So having meetings with Russia, China, North Korea — I believe in it. Nothing bad’s going to come out of it, and maybe some good will come out,” he said in an interview with CBS News, excerpts of which were released Sunday.
“But I go in with low expectations — I’m not going in with high expectations. I can’t tell you what’s going to happen … we’ll see if something comes of it,” the president said.
Mr. Trump said he hadn’t thought about asking Mr. Putin to extradite the Russians accused in an indictment last week of stealing the emails of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman and Democratic National Committee officials and releasing them to hurt Mrs. Clinton’s campaign.
“Well, I might,” he said. “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.”
Some Democrats have called on Mr. Trump, who was briefed on the indictments before they were publicly announced Friday, to cancel the meeting in light of the new developments.
Mr. Trump blamed Democrats for “allowing themselves to be hacked” and said he heard people had been trying to hack into the Republican National Committee as well.
“We had much better defenses, so they couldn’t. I think the DNC should be ashamed of themselves for allowing themselves to be hacked,” he said. “They had bad defenses and they were able to be hacked. But I heard they were trying to hack the Republicans too. But — and this may be wrong — but they had much stronger defenses.”
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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