President Donald Trump said he will invite Russian President Vladimir Putin to the White House, but only at "the right time".

Mr Trump said: "I don’t think this is the right time, but the answer is yes, I would.

"Look, it’s very easy for me to say absolutely, I won’t. That’s the easy thing for me to do, but that’s the stupid thing to do. If you don’t have dialogue, you have to be fools. Let's be the smart people, not the stupid people."

He made the comments on Air Force One on Wednesday night but they were only published late on Thursday.

Mr Trump also described how he had pressed Mr Putin at the G20 in Hamburg last week over election hacking but had not wanted to get into a "fistfight".

The US president said he asked Mr Putin "very simply were you involved with the meddling in the election? He said, absolutely not. I was not involved. He was very strong on it.

"I then said to him again, in a totally different way, were you involved with the meddling? He said I was not, absolutely not."

He then decided to move on to discuss Syria.

Mr Trump said: “He said absolutely not, twice. What do you do? End up in a fistfight with somebody, OK?"