It came shortly before The New York Times reported that Trump's oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., son-in-law Jared Kushner, and then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort met with a Russian lawyer last year -- the first known meeting of several of the senior-most members of Trump's team and a Russian national during the campaign. Democrats would have deeply resented Trump’s ‘birther’ questioning of Barack Obama’s origins, and would have been highly skeptical of the former reality TV star’s political bona fides even if he hadn’t made a sharp turn to the right as he explored a presidential bid in the run up to the 2012 election. I don’t know — and I wouldn’t know him from Adam except I see his picture and I would know what he looks like.”

PUTIN: “I am very happy to meet you, Mr. President.” — remarks in a brief, public portion of their meeting Friday. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Trump “pressed President Putin on more than one occasion regarding Russian involvement.” Anonymous U.S. officials denied Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s assertions that Trump had “accepted” Putin’s false assurances that Russia was not behind the hacking and leaking of Democratic Party documents last year. Tillerson said Trump and Putin are “rightly” focused on moving relations between their countries forward from what he called an “intractable disagreement.”

But U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat and vice chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, said that whatever Trump told Putin would have carried more weight if the president hadn’t “equivocated” about who was behind the election interference. “Vladimir Putin ... got away with literally trying to change the outcome ... of our election.”

Trump argued for a rapprochement with Moscow in his campaign but has been unable to deliver because his administration has been dogged by investigations into the allegations of Russian interference in the election and ties with his campaign. First daughter Ivanka Trump, who is said to be considering an informal role as a White House czar on women in the workforce, is said to have played a key role in persuading the president to take a more moderate stance.
U.S. President Donald Trump says he and Russian President Vladimir Putin "discussed forming an impenetrable cyber security unit so that election hacking, and many other negative things, will be guarded and safe." Trump later says he does not think this will happen.