i m not in position to understand fully or talk about what happened in helsinki. i ll turn it over to the national security director. the issue was discussed and in fact president putin said the first issue that president trump raised was election meddling. reporter: still so many questions about that helsinki summit and that private meeting between president trump and president putin. but one thing has changed as we end this week here, there was a unified message from the u.s. government about russian election meddling. but that unified voice missing the president s own. he has yet to use his own megaphone to draw attention to the election attack. jeff zeleny, cnn, new jersey. the u.s. government suggests a new method for reuniting children and parents separated at the southern border, but that idea is being highlied. we ll tell you about it coming up here. plus, the souvenir t-shirt
returning to it, and i m quote hearing the two-year hysteria surrounding russian interference in 2016 elections that did not happen. it sounds almost exactly like what president trump said last night. speaking at a rally in eastern pennsylvania, the president had warm words about his summit with vladimir putin, harsh words about the russia probe. we got along really well. by the way, that s a good thing, not a bad thing. that s a really good thing. now we re being hindered by the russian hoax. it s a hoax. i ll tell you what, russia is very unhappy that trump won, that i can tell you. but i got along great with putin. we re being hindered by the russian hoax, he said. now the president sometimes clarifies what he means by that, saying any notion of collusion is a hoax, but he often doesn t make that distinct, seems to imply the entire mueller probe into the election attack is a hoax, or the attack itself is one. that s where his claim russia is
game. and if you look at russia in history, they had 400 years czars. seven years of totalitarian communism. then the collapse of the soviet union, and for the last 20 years vladimir putin and the intelligence agencies have been in power. they have one goal in mind, which is to recover from the collapse of the soviet union. they believe that president trump can help them do that. they believe that election hacking and manipulation is a tool that can help them achieve that. they are feeling very strong. one other question. i m thinking about the indictment that mueller released a couple weeks ago, the 12 russian intelligence officers they are saying were behind the 2016 election attack. is there any separation? what is the separation between intelligence officers in russia and vladimir putin? well, vladimir putin ran the
rush interference, what does he do? as of today still refusing to forcefully call out putin for ordering the election attack. why? next question. if members of congress are so upset by the reality of trump and putin, what are they going to do? republican jeff flake has harsh words for the president. but what will they do? and just in case you like trump are almost completely immune to the truth about russian interference, how about this? the man the president hand-picked to run the fbi tonight says clearly the mueller investigation is not a witch hunt. impact. and yesterday it was would and wouldn t. now the white house walks back the word no. another cover story to clean up. another mess for the president. we ve got to get after it. what do you say? let s get after it. all right. clearly president trump is not all in when it comes to keeping
presidential election, sort of. well, i would, because he s in charge of the country just like i consider myself to be responsible for things that happen in this country. certainly as the leader of a country, you would have to hold him responsible, yes. and two weeks before his inauguration, president trump while he was president-elect was briefed in detail on u.s. intelligence that putin ordered the election attack. the former director of national intelligence james clapper was involved in that briefing. before we left the room, they started writing a press release about our encounter, and we re trying to say that the russian meddling, the interference had no impact in the outcome of the election. we didn t say that, but i do think there was skepticism from the get go. from that day to this day, that indicated that anything that attacked the legitimacy or questioned the legitimacy of