Trump To Host Russian President Putin in the White House

President Donald Trump would invite Russian President Vladimir Putin to the White House “at the right time,” according to recently released White House excerpts of an off-the-record conversation with reporters aboard Air Force One Wednesday night.

“I don’t think this is the right time,” the president said of the hypothetical White House invitation, “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. Let’s be the smart people, not the stupid people.”

As he has in the past, Trump reasoned that the two superpowers should have an open dialogue, despite Russia’s meddling in the U.S. 2016 election — a topic Trump discussed with Putin in their meeting last week at the G-20 Summit.

After the more than two hour bilateral meeting in Hamburg, Russian officials said Trump accepted Putin’s denials about Russian interference. White House officials declined repeated opportunities to push back on that account on the record.

Trump himself recounted the meeting Wednesday night, saying he asked 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.”

When Putin denied the allegations twice, Trump “very shortly there afterwards” brought up Syria. “What do you do?” Trump said, explaining why he moved on. “End up in a fistfight with somebody, okay?”

Asked Thursday if he was mad that Putin lied about Trump accepting that Moscow didn’t meddle in the 2016 election, Trump clarified on behalf of the Russian President: “He didn’t say that. No. He said, I think he accepted it, but you’d have to ask him. That’s a big difference.”

Trump has repeatedly hedged on whether or not he believes Russia hacked the election, again casting a wide net of blame Wednesday night when he introduced the possibility of other actors interfering. “I’m not saying it wasn’t Russia” but instead “that we have to protect ourselves no matter who it is.” He pointed out: “you know, China is very good at this. I hate it say it, North Korea is very good at this.”

There is one question Trump didn’t get to ask Putin that he says he will next time.

“I’m going to ask him: who were you really for? Because I can’t believe that he would have been for me.”

When Trump came to speak with reporters on Air Force One en route to Paris Wednesday night, the comments were thought to be off-the-record. The White House determined Thursday they would release parts of the conversation after Trump asked a print pool reporter why she didn’t use what he said last night