text: US president says: ‘We’ve got a lot of killers’ when asked about Russian leader, sparking stern response from Florida senator Rubio 
   
   Donald Trump has once again defended Vladimir Putin against accusations that he is a killer, telling Fox News: “We’ve got a lot of killers. What, do you think our country’s so innocent?” 
   
   The US president appeared to place the US and Russia on the same moral plane in an interview broadcast before the Super Bowl kicked off in Houston, Texas. Asked by the host, Bill O’Reilly, if he respected Putin, Trump replied: “I do respect Putin. 
   
   “Will I get along with him? I have no idea. It’s very possible I won’t.” 
   
   
   
   O’Reilly said: “He’s a killer, though. Putin’s a killer.” 
   
   “There are a lot of killers,” Trump replied. “We’ve got a lot of killers. What, do you think our country’s so innocent?” 
   
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   Trump’s respect for and willingness to work with Putin was a familiar theme during an election that the US intelligence agencies believe their Russian counterparts sought to influence on Trump’s behalf. 
   
   Such claims prompted a split between Trump and the intelligence community that has not yet healed. 
   
   The two presidents spoke by phone last weekend, a conversation reportedly much smoother than calls with leaders of allies such as Australia. A summit meeting has been mooted by both governments. 
   
   It has previously been suggested to Trump that Putin is a killer. In December 2015, the MSNBC host Joe Scarborough told Trump: “He kills journalists that don’t agree with him.” 
   
   Trump replied: “Well, I think that our country does plenty of killing too, Joe.” 
   
   The same week, Trump told ABC News: “In all fairness to Putin, you’re saying he killed people. I haven’t seen that. I don’t know that he has. 
   
   “If he has killed reporters I think that’s terrible. But this isn’t like somebody that’s stood with a gun and he’s taken the blame or he’s admitted that he’s killed. He’s always denied it. 
   
   “It’s never been proven that he’s killed anybody, so you know you’re supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, at least in our country. He has not been proven that he’s killed reporters.” 
   
   After O’Reilly said he did not “know of any government leaders that are killers”, Trump turned to the Iraq war, seeming to equate George W Bush with Putin, though he did not name the former president. 
   
   “Take a look at what we’ve done too. We’ve made a lot of mistakes,” he said, adding, falsely, that he had opposed invasion. “I’ve been against the war in Iraq from the beginning.” 
   
   “A lot of mistakes,” Trump continued, “OK, but a lot of people were killed. So a lot of killers around, believe me.” 
   
   
   
   On Monday the Kremlin said it wanted an apology from Fox News over O’Reilly’s “unacceptable” comments. “We consider such words from the Fox TV company to be unacceptable and insulting and, honestly speaking, we would prefer to get an apology from such a respected TV company,” the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters on a conference call. 
   
   According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 36 journalists have been murdered in Russia since 1992, 23 since Putin first became president in 2000. Most famously, Anna Politkovskaya was shot dead in 2006 while investigating torture in Chechnya. 
   
   
   
   Trump has said he accepts reports that Russia was behind hacks against his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, but rejected the notion that he could not have won the White House without Russian help. Investigations into links between Trump aides and Russian actors are ongoing. 
   
   
   
   The Arizona senator, John McCain, a fierce opponent of lifting sanctions on Russia, a prospect with which Trump has flirted, has said the Russian president is “a murderer and a thug”. 
   
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   On Sunday the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, issued a mild rebuke to Trump. Asked what his response would have been if Barack Obama had compared the US to Russia under Putin, he said Putin was a “former KGB agent and a thug”. 
   
   “I don’t think there’s any equivalency between the way Russians conduct themselves and the way the United States does,” he said. 
   
   “I’m not going to critique the president’s every utterance, but I do think that America is exceptional, America is different, we don’t operate in any way the way the Russians do. There’s a clear distinction here that all Americans understand and I would not have characterised it that way.” 
   
   Marco Rubio, senator for Florida and an opponent in the presidential primary, was harsher. “When has a Democratic political activist been poisoned by the GOP or vice versa?” he said in a tweet. “We are not the same as Putin.” 
   
   Trump also answered a question from O’Reilly about his oft-stated but never evidenced belief that his defeat by a margin of nearly 3 million in the popular vote had been caused by massive voter fraud. 
   
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   “When you see … people who are not citizens and they are [on] the registration rolls … it’s a really bad situation,” Fox quoted Trump as saying. 
   
   Trump also said he was willing to work with Kiev and Moscow to resolve the separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine, after a telephone call with the Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, on Saturday. 
   
   The call was the first direct contact between the two leaders since the inauguration of Trump, whose aim to improve relations with the Kremlin has alarmed Kiev while the nearly three-year-old conflict remains unresolved. 
   
   It followed fresh artillery attacks in the Donbass region of Ukraine, which broke a lull in shelling at a frontline hotspot that had raised hopes the conflict’s worst escalation in months was waning. 
   
   “We will work with Ukraine, Russia and all other parties involved to help them restore peace along the border,” Trump said in a White House statement after talking to Poroshenko. ||||| This conversation will be deleted and this account cannot message you until you message them again. 
   
   The conversation will be deleted and you will not be able to participate in this group. ||||| President Trump is sticking with his argument that millions of illegal immigrants voted in the 2016 presidential election, amid calls for him to provide proof and questions about whether he’ll indeed have an official probe into the issue. 
   
   “Many people have come out and said I am right,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly to be aired Sunday before the NFL Super Bowl. 
   
   Watch the O'Reilly Super Bowl LI interview with Trump at 4 pm ET Sunday on Fox Sports. Tune in for more of the interview on "The O'Reilly Factor" Monday and Tuesday at 8 pm ET on Fox News Channel. 
   
   Trump didn’t directly answer a question about whether he, in fact, has evidence -- but suggested that he has seen voter-registration records that suggest widespread voter fraud. 
   
   “We can be babies, but you take a look at the registration,” Trump said. “You have illegals, you have dead people, you have this. It’s really a bad situation.” 
   
   Trump became president by winning the Electoral College vote but did not win the popular vote. And losing that vote to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton by an estimated 3 million ballots has been a continuing source of contention with him. 
   
   Last month, Trump suggested he would ask for a “major investigation” through the Justice Department. And he purportedly was considering signing an executive order to start the process. But the administration has not taken any public action on the issue in roughly the past 10 days. 
   
   Also on Sunday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R- Ky., told CNN’s “State of the Union” that he doesn’t want to spend federal money to investigate Trump’s allegation. 
   
   Trump also said in the Fox interview that he has "respect" for Russian President Vladimir Putin, but that respect does not mean they'll get along. 
   
   "I say it’s better to get along with Russia than not,” he said. “And if Russia helps us in the fight against ISIS, which is a major fight, and Islamic terrorism all over the world -- that’s a good thing. … Will I get along with him? I have no idea." 
   
   Pressed about Putin's history of violence, Trump said: "There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What do you think? Our country’s so innocent? ||||| CLOSE Skip in Skip x Embed x Share President Donald Trump went on record saying he respects Russian leader Vladimir Putin in a recent interview. Time 
   
   President Donald Trump speaks in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, on Feb. 3, 2017. The Trump administration imposed sanctions on 13 people and a dozen companies in response to Iran's recent ballistic missile test. (Photo: Evan Vucci, AP) 
   
   President Trump is reiterating his desire to improve relations with Russia and dismissing concerns that Vladimir Putin is a “killer,” in a Fox News interview set to air Sunday before the Super Bowl. 
   
   Fox News released excerpts of the interview Saturday in which host Bill O’Reilly asks the president why he’s so respectful of Putin. 
   
   "Putin’s is a killer," O'Reilly said in the interview. 
   
   "There are a lot of killers," Trump responded. "Got a lot of killers. What, do you think our country's so innocent?" 
   
   The president’s relationship with Russia and Putin have been under close scrutiny for months. Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election campaign dogged Trump throughout his election and transition, as intelligence agencies delivered increasingly urgent assessments of Russian efforts to hack emails belonging to the Democratic National Committee and advisers of Trump rival Hillary Clinton. 
   
   The excerpts drew condemnation from some conservatives, including the Wall Street Journal’s deputy editorial page editor, who tweeted that “Trump puts US on moral par with Putin's Russia. Never in history has a President slandered his country like this.” 
   
   Trump puts US on moral par with Putin's Russia. Never in history has a President slandered his country like this. https://t.co/LrP8ycG1Y9 — Bret Stephens (@StephensWSJ) February 5, 2017 
   
   The president also said he doesn't know if he'll get along with Putin, but believes Russian assistance in fighting radical Islamic terrorism would be valuable. 
   
   The full interview airs at 4 p.m. ET on local Fox stations. 
   
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target: – President Trump tells Fox News that he does indeed respect Vladimir Putin, even though he agreed with Bill O'Reilly's assessment that the Russian leader is a "killer." Said Trump: "There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What, do you think our country’s so innocent?" As he has in the past, Trump argued that it makes sense to get along with Moscow to help the fight against ISIS. And as for Putin, "Will I get along with him? I have no idea." Fox released an excerpt as part of a pre-Super Bowl interview that will air at 4pm Eastern. The "innocent" line has triggered a quick backlash, with USA Today picking up on this tweet from Wall Street Journal deputy editorial page editor Bret Stephens: "Trump puts US on moral par with Putin's Russia. Never in history has a President slandered his country like this." The Guardian notes that Trump has expressed the sentiment before: When MSNBC's Joe Scarborough told Trump that Putin kills journalists, he replied: “Well, I think that our country does plenty of killing, too, Joe.”