Best lines from President Trump's latest round of interviews
He talked about Putin a lot.
— -- President Donald Trump stayed out of the public eye for the first half of this week but gave two interviews Wednesday ahead of his state visit to France for Bastille Day.
The president touched on a wide range of topics during the two interviews, the first with Pat Robertson for “The 700 Club” and the second with Reuters.
Here are highlights from both.
On his son Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with a Russian lawyer during the campaign
“Most of the phony politicians who are Democrats who I watched over the last couple of days – most of those phonies that act holier-than-thou, if the same thing happened to them, they would have taken that meeting in a heartbeat,” he said to Reuters.
“If you got a call and said, 'Listen, I have information on Hillary and the DNC,' or whatever it was they said, most people are going to take that meeting, I think,” he said to Reuters.
On his frustrations with the focus on possible interactions between Trump campaign associates and Russia
"The only frustration is that this Russia story is a hoax made up by the Democrats as an excuse for losing an election that they should have won because it’s almost impossible for a Republican to win the Electoral College," he said to Reuters.
"There was zero coordination. It’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. There’s no coordination, this was a hoax, this was made up by the Democrats," he continued.
"This is the greatest con job in history," he said to Reuters.
On his meeting with Vladimir Putin at the G-20 summit
"We had a good meeting. I think we had an excellent meeting. One thing we did is we have a cease-fire in a major part of Syria where there was tremendous bedlam and tremendous killing. And by the way, this cease-fire has held for four days — those cease-fires haven't held at all. That's because President Putin and President Trump made the deal," Trump said to Robertson in “The 700 Club” interview.
"It was a great G-20. We had 20 countries. I get along — I think really fantastically — with the head of every country," he said.
What Trump says Putin doesn’t like about him
"We are the most powerful country in the world, and we are getting more and more powerful because I'm a big military person. As an example, if Hillary had won, our military would be decimated. Our energy would be much more expensive. That's what Putin doesn't like about me. And that's why I say, 'Why would he want me?' Because from day one, I wanted a strong military. He doesn't want to see that,” Trump said, according to a press release from “The 700 Club.”
"And from day one, I want fracking and everything else to get energy prices low and to create tremendous energy. We're going to be self-supporting. We just about are now. We're going to be exporting energy. He doesn't want that. He would like Hillary, where she wants to have windmills. He would much rather have that because energy prices would go up and Russia, as you know, relies very much on energy," Trump added, according to the press release.
“It’s really the one question I wish I would have asked Putin: 'Were you actually supporting me?'” Trump told Reuters.
What he said to Putin about Russian interference in the election
"First question - first 20, 25 minutes - I said, ‘Did you do it?’ He said, 'No, I did not, absolutely not.' I then asked him a second time, in a totally different way. He said, 'Absolutely not,'" Trump told Reuters.
"Somebody did say if he did do it, you wouldn’t have found out about it. Which is a very interesting point," Trump said.
"We have to find out and get to the bottom of what’s going on because we can’t have even the slightest suspicion about our election process," he told Reuters.