President Donald Trump said in a joint press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin Monday that special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 election “is a disaster for our country.”
“I think it’s kept us apart,” Trump continued. “It’s kept us separated. There was no collusion at all. Everybody knows it.”
He’d been asked about a tweet of his from earlier in the day that the Mueller probe was to blame for the strained tensions between the United States and Russia — notably leaving out Russia’s alleged election meddling.
“Do you hold Russia at all accountable for anything in particular?” Reuters’ Jeff Mason had asked.
Trump added: “People are being brought out to the fore. So far, that I know, virtually none of it related to the campaign. And they’re going to have to try really hard to find somebody that did relate to the campaign.”
Trump said he’d run a “clean campaign.”
“We won that race,” he said. “It’s a shame that there could even be a little bit of a cloud over it. People know that. People understand it.”
He said the “main thing” — “we discussed this also,” he noted, referring to Putin — “is zero collusion.”
“It has had a negative impact upon the relationship of the two largest nuclear powers in the world,” he concluded. “We have 90 percent of nuclear power between the two countries. It’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous what’s going on with the probe.”
Watch below:
Standing beside Putin, Trump calls Mueller probe "a disaster for our country.” pic.twitter.com/NVtEk7GYFi
— Matt Shuham (@mattshuham) July 16, 2018
