President Donald Trump called his meeting with Putin “productive,” highlighting a ceasefire in a region of Syria negotiated between the U.S. and Russia that went into effect last weekend and has largely held. | Alex Brandon/AP Photo Trump: I wish I asked Putin ‘were you actually supporting me?'

President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he pressed Russian President Vladimir Putin multiple times during their meeting last week on the Kremlin’s efforts to interfere in last year’s presidential election.

But there’s one question Trump did not ask of his Russian counterpart that he now wishes he had: “Were you actually supporting me?"


That Russia was behind a wave of election-year cyberattacks against Democratic institutions and individuals – and that those attacks were intended to aid Trump’s candidacy – has been the assessment of the U.S. intelligence community for months, a conclusion the president himself has been hesitant to accept whole-heartedly. Instead, he has suggested that other nations, or perhaps other individuals or entities, could have been to blame for the attacks, possibilities that have not been raised publicly by any U.S. intelligence official.

In an interview with Reuters, Trump hypothesized that many of his campaign positions, such as building up the U.S. military and energy industry, run counter to Russia’s interests. For that reason, the president suggested that he might not have actually been the Kremlin’s preferred candidate, wondering aloud, “why would Putin want me?”

“It’s really the one question I wish I would have asked Putin: Were you actually supporting me?" Trump said. "I would bet that inwardly Putin would have been against me.”

The president called his meeting with Putin “productive,” highlighting a ceasefire in a region of Syria negotiated between the U.S. and Russia that went into effect last weekend and has largely held. He predicted that he and Putin could eventually solve the ongoing civil war in Syria, where the U.S. and Russia have backed opposing sides, as well as in Ukraine, where Russia has stoked fighting in the eastern part of the nation.

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“I was very tough with President Putin. We have a very important relationship,” Trump said. “It’s going to be a relationship where lots of lives could be saved, like as an example with the ceasefire, which nobody else could have gotten but me."

On the question of interference into last year’s election, Trump told Reuters that “something happened” and that “we have to find out and get to the bottom of what’s going on, because we can’t have even the slightest suspicion about our election process.” But he once again raised doubts that Russia was to blame, remarking that “somebody did say if [Putin] did do it, you wouldn’t have found out about it. Which is a very interesting point.”

And despite recent revelations that his son met last June with a Russian lawyer who he had been told possessed damaging information from the Kremlin about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Trump remained insistent that there had been no cooperation between his campaign and Moscow.

Donald Trump Jr. has said there was no information gleaned from the meeting, but that it happened at all has called into question past assurances from Trump’s team that there was no cooperation or communication with the Russian government at all. But even with proof that his son had sought information on Clinton from the Kremlin, Trump maintained that his campaign had no ties to the Russian government.

"There was zero coordination. It’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. There’s no coordination, this was a hoax, this was made up by the Democrats,” he said. "This is the greatest con job in history, where a party sits down the day after they got their ass kicked, and they say, 'Huh, what’s our excuse?'”