Just hours after President Donald Trump was forced to "clarify" that he thinks Russia hacked the United States, the 2016 election, the Democratic and Republican Parties, political candidates and the power grid, he said he doesn't consider them an adversary.
In an interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Trump chided the American press for criticizing him for wanting to get along with Russia.
"It’s incredible you look at World War I and World War II, there was Germany. And in World War II, Russia lost 50 million people and helped us win the war," Trump began. "I was saying to myself, Russia really helped us. I’m not pro-Russia, pro-anybody, I just want to have this country be safe, I don’t want nuclear weapons — even people thinking about it. Russia and the United States control 90 percent of the nuclear weapons in the world. Getting along with Russia and not only for that reason, it’s a good thing."
Trump did not clarify if a foreign country hacking the U.S. government fell under national security.
"Are they our chief adversary?" Carlson asked.
"Strong military but there economy is smaller than China," he said. "I don’t want to use the word adversary, we can work together, everybody can do well and we can live in peace."
He then said he watches Carlson frequently and notes that the host frequently talks about the size of China.
"You look at what they’ve done in a fairly short period of time, that’s because of a lot of bad leadership on behalf of the United States, we allowed it to happen we allowed them to make hundreds of billions of dollars," Trump continued. "Right now as you see and you’ve probably noticed things are happening — we have to level the playing field between the United States and China. We’ve increased our net worth, we’ve increased our worth by more than $7 trillion since the election. Were about twice the size of China — our economy. China has the massive economy, they have the second biggest by far."
Watch the conversation below:
