Well, that was a thing.
In a wild press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin that, judging from all of the commentators currently yelling about treason, freaked some people the fuck out, President Donald Trump again denied any collusion between his campaign and Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election, and pronounced himself skeptical that Russia tried to interfere in 2016 at all. Instead, he used the opportunity to publicly trash his own FBI and demand Hillary Clinton’s missing emails.
Here was his take on the whole 2016 issue: “My people came to me...they said they think it’s Russia. I have President Putin. He just said it’s not Russia. I will say this. I don’t see any reason why it would be, but I really do want to see the server, but I have confidence in both parties...what happened to the server?” OK then.
He also threw a soccer ball around?
Trump’s denials—delivered next to a smirking Putin—came amidst a highly anticipated summit between the two leaders, and followed a mysterious closed-door conversation between the two in which no aides were present.
One of the most revealing—if wholly unsurprising—moments of the bizarre press conference came when Putin freely admitted that he’d wanted President Trump to win the 2016 election, moments after denying Russian efforts to secure Trump’s victory.
Asked whether Russia would consider the extradition of a dozen intelligence officers who have been charged with actively hacking Democratic National Committee computers, Putin instead claimed that Russian law enforcement was more than capable of questioning the suspects, but added the American officials, including those from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office, could be present for the interrogations.
But, he added, to agree to do so would also open the door to Russian officials being present for American interrogations of U.S. citizen wanted by Russia.
Putin also made sure to invoke George Soros, the (not-so-subtly antisemitic) boogeyman to many in the far/extremely-racist right wing.
You can watch the entire press conference below. Or you can do something much more productive with your life, like hugging a loved one, or spending some time outside breathing in fresh air, and thinking about how wonderful it is to be alive. For now, anyway.