In a Wednesday interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, President Donald Trump pushed back on the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment that the Russian government wanted to help Trump win the 2016 election.
Trump claimed that Russia actually would have wanted Hillary Clinton to win, arguing that her policies would have been more favorable to Russia. Trump’s claims about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s preferences came after the stunning revelation that his son, Donald Trump Jr., met with a Kremlin-linked lawyer who supposedly had dirt on Clinton. Emails disclosed by Trump Jr. show that a publicist noted that the meeting would be part of the Russian government’s efforts to help Trump.
“We are the most powerful country in the world and we are getting more and more powerful because I’m a big military person. As an example, if Hillary had won, our military would be decimated. Our energy would be much more expensive. That’s what Putin doesn’t like about me. And that’s why I say, why would he want me? Because from day one I wanted a strong military, he doesn’t want to see that,” Trump told CBN’s Pat Robertson.
“And from day one I want fracking and everything else to get energy prices low and to create tremendous energy. We’re going to be self-supporting, we just about are now. We’re going to be exporting energy – he doesn’t want that,” the President continued. “He would like Hillary where she wants to have windmills. He would much rather have that because energy prices would go up and Russia as you know relies very much on energy.”
Trump said that there are “many things” he supports that are “the exact opposite” of what Putin wants.
“So what I keep hearing about that he would have rather had Trump, I think ‘probably not,’ because when I want a strong military, you know she wouldn’t have spent the money on the military,” Trump said. “When I want tremendous energy, we’re opening up coal, we’re opening up natural gas, we’re opening up fracking, all the things that he would hate, but nobody ever mentions that.”
