‘Time to Move Forward’ on Russia, Trump Says, as Criticism Intensifies
WASHINGTON — President Trump tried without success on Sunday to put the matter of Russia’s election meddling behind him, insisting
that he had “strongly pressed” President Vladimir V. Putin on the matter twice in a private meeting last week and declaring that it was “time to move forward.”
But if Mr. Trump believed his willingness to raise the election interference directly with Mr. Putin would quiet questions about whether he could be trusted to stand up to Moscow — an issue
that has shadowed his presidency — he grappled instead on Sunday with the reality that the meeting might have raised more suspicions than it quelled.
“You are hurting your ability to govern this nation by forgiving
and forgetting and empowering,” Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said of Mr. Trump, calling his meeting with Mr. Putin “disastrous.”
“The more he talks about this in terms of not being sure, the more he throws our intelligence communities under the bus, the more he’s willing to forgive
and forget Putin, the more suspicion,” Mr. Graham added in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “And I think it’s going to dog his presidency until he breaks this cycle.”
As if to underscore the point, the White House confronted reports later Sunday
that Donald Trump Jr., Mr. Trump’s eldest son, was promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton before agreeing to meet with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer at Trump Tower during the campaign last year.
On Sunday, Mr. Priebus flatly said Mr. Lavrov’s version was “not true,” and described a confrontational meeting between the two presidents, saying
that Mr. Trump “absolutely did not believe the denial of President Putin.”
“This was an extensive portion of the meeting,” Mr. Priebus said of the election interference discussion.
