President Trump says he has “low expectations” for his sit-down with Russian President Vladimir Putin — and “hadn’t thought” about discussing the 12 Russians just indicted for trying to interfere in the 2016 election
“I go in with low expectations,” he told CBS News ahead of the Monday summit with Putin, which will take place in Helsinki, Finland. “I’m not going in with high expectations.”
Asked what his goal is for the meeting, he said: “I’ll let you know after the meeting.”
Trump said he just generally likes having meetings, pointing to last month’s Singapore summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
“Nothing bad’s going to come out of it, and maybe some good will come out,” he said.
Trump told CBS he “hadn’t thought” of asking Putin if he planned extradite the 12 Russian intelligence officers indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller on Friday for hacking Democrats during the 2016 election.
“Well, I might,” Trump said. “I hadn’t thought of that. But I certainly, I’ll be asking about it. But again, this was during the Obama administration. They were doing whatever it was during the Obama administration.”
“And I heard that they were trying, or people were to hack into the RNC too, the Republican National Committee, but we had much better defenses,” he continued.
The Mueller indictment makes no mention of any attempts to hack the Republican National Committee.
The president blamed the Democrats, not the Russians, for the intrusion.
“I think the DNC should be ashamed of themselves for allowing themselves to be hacked,” Trump said.
“They had bad defenses and they were able to be hacked.”



