Putin: I wanted Trump to win the election

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday he wanted President Donald Trump to win the 2016 election because he believed Trump's policies would be more friendly to the Kremlin.

"Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Because he talked about bringing the U.S.-Russia relationship back to normal,” Putin said, standing alongside Trump at a joint news conference.


Putin was asked whether he directed any of his officials to help Trump’s presidential campaign, but Putin appeared to sidestep that part of the question.

The news conference — which came as the pair met at a much-anticipated summit in Helsinki — followed a closed-door meeting that lasted two hours, where they said they addressed issues including Syria, denuclearization and diplomatic relations.

And although Putin said he was rooting for Trump, the American president in the past denied that was the case. Trump previously said Putin would have preferred to see his 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton, in the White House — saying that was partly because Trump planned to ramp up military spending more than Clinton would have.

“There are many things that I do that are the exact opposite of what he would want. 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 military,” Trump said in July 2017.

Putin’s comments in Helsinki about Trump's campaign come days after special counsel Robert Mueller offered the latest salvo in his investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, indicting 12 Russian military intelligence officers accused of infiltrating Democratic Party computer servers.

At the joint news conference, Putin denied any evidence that Russia was behind election meddling, while Trump tried to switch gears to a familiar refrain from the 2016 campaign: Clinton’s private email server.

