President Donald Trump on Monday said both he and Vladimir Putin lamented the "wedge" that had been driven between the United States and Russia because of the investigation of special counsel Robert Mueller.
In his first television interview shortly after his one-on-one with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump told friend and Fox News host Sean Hannity that "we've had a phony witch hunt deal drive us apart."
"President Putin . . . one of the early things that he said when we started, 'it's really a shame, because we could do so much good,' whether it is humanitarian aid throughout the Middle East, so many different things," Trump said. "The safety of nuclear power, which ultimately, there is nothing bigger and more important. And they drove a phony wedge . . ."
Trump asserted Putin is "angry" about the Mueller probe — and the indictment of 12 Russian military intelligence officers.
"He knows exactly about it," Trump said. "It is very interesting, what is happening, you look at the whole thing. He understands it. I don't know if you could see, he was incensed even talking about it . . . But he is willing to let Robert Mueller's people go over there, do an investigation, people working together with the Russian investigators."
Trump also declared, because of his back-to-back summits with North Korea's Kim Jong Un and Putin, a "potential problem" has now been averted.
"Dealing with two nuclear nations" who have "90 percent of the nuclear power in the world between" them, Trump said.
"And we've had a phony witch hunt deal drive us apart. It's the thing that he told me. He said 'what a shame.' He felt it was very hard for me to make a deal because you know, all of this nonsense . . . It's just a sad thing. It's a very sad thing for our country."
Trump also said he is confident the Russians do not have any compromising information about him — because if they did, everybody would know about it.
"[Putin] said as strongly as you can say it, they have no information on Trump," Trump said. "It was an interesting statement, too. One thing you know, if they had it, it would have been out. He said it's nonsense."
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