Three top Trump White House officials on Saturday would not dispute Russian President Vladimir Putin's assertion that President Donald Trump had accepted his denial regarding Moscow's meddling in last year's election at their G-20 meeting.
"We are not going to make comments about what other people say," Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told reporters onboard Air Force One, according to audio of the press gaggle.
"President Trump will be happy to make statements himself about that.
"It was very clear that he made his position felt – and after very substantive dialogue on this, they agreed to move on to other discussions," he said, referring to Friday's meeting in Germany.
Mnuchin added that Trump "handled the meeting brilliantly."
National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, also aboard the flight, would not answer questions about Putin's comment.
"What the president and Secretary [of State Rex] Tillerson charged us with as they came out of meeting is what we are going to do going forward," he said.
McMaster instead highlighted the agreement between Trump and Putin for their countries to work together on cybersecurity matters.
In Hamburg earlier Saturday, Putin said he felt that the U.S. president had accepted his denial that the Kremlin was involved in the presidential election – cautioning that it was better to ask Trump himself.
He also said that Trump was "very different" in real life versus on television.
But Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters Friday that Trump had accepted Putin's denial.
The comment came after Tillerson said at his own presser that Trump and Putin had a "robust and lengthy" conversation about the meddling issue after Trump raised it at the outset of the meeting.
Both Tillerson and Lavrov sat in on the session, which lasted more than two hours.
Trump has only said that his meeting with Putin was "tremendous."
White House economic adviser Gary Cohn, who also was aboard Air Force One, said Trump focused the conversation on Ukraine, Syria and North Korea.
"It's very important that President Trump had very substantive dialogue with his counterpart on this," he said, according to the audio.
"It is very clear that there are many issues we need to open a dialogue on.
"And, I think President Trump handled it brilliantly."
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