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Trump: 'Low Expectations' for Putin Summit

by Ken Bredemeier

   WASHINGTON --

   U.S. President Donald Trump is setting low expectations for his
   Monday's summit in Helsinki with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

   "I go in with low expectations," the American leader told CBS News in
   an interview broadcast Sunday. "I'm not going in with high
   expectations."

   Trump declined to offer his goals for the first summit between the two
   world leaders, but promised that "nothing bad" would come out of it.
   Trump and Putin have talked previously on the sidelines of
   international gatherings.

   "I think it's a good thing to meet," Trump said. "I do believe in
   meetings. I believe that having a meeting with Chairman Kim [Jong Un of
   North Korea] was a good thing. I think having meetings with the
   president of China [Xi Jinping] was a very good thing. I believe it's
   really good. So having meetings with Russia, China, North Korea, I
   believe in it. Nothing bad is going to come out of it, and maybe some
   good will come out."

   Trump's summit with Putin is coming three days after special counsel
   Robert Mueller indicted 12 Russian intelligence officers, accusing them
   of meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election to help Trump win
   the White House.

   Russia has no extradition treaty with the U.S. so it is unlikely that
   the Russia would turn them over to the U.S. to stand trial. CBS
   television anchor Jeff Glor asked Trump if he planned to ask Putin to
   allow their extradition, but he said, "I hadn't thought of that."

   "Well, I might," Trump said. "But I certainly, I'll be asking about it.
   But again, this was during the Obama administration. They were doing
   whatever it was during the Obama administration."

   Trump's national security adviser, John Bolton, told ABC News he
   thought it would be "pretty silly" for Trump to ask Putin to extradite
   the accused intelligence officials, "something he can't do legally
   under Russian law."

   Nonetheless, Bolton said the indictment is a "serious matter" that
   Trump needs to talk about it with Putin. He said the Russian leader in
   the past has said the "Russian state" was not involved in the
   interference, but "we'll have to find out now what he means," since the
   military intelligence agency GRU has now been directly accused of
   hacking into computers of Trump's political opponents at the Democratic
   National Committee.

   Bolton said, "I find it hard to believe" that Putin did not know of the
   meddling, which the U.S. intelligence community concluded he directed
   in an effort to help Trump defeat his Democratic challenger, former
   U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

   The national security adviser said Trump and Putin would also be
   discussing Russia's 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimean peninsula and
   subsequent U.S. economic sanctions in protest, Russian support for
   Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the continuing involvement of U.S.
   and Russian troops in Syria and efforts to demand North Korea end its
   nuclear weapons development.

   Trump has long dismissed Mueller's probe as a "witch hunt," including
   Friday at a news conference in Britain ahead of the announcement of the
   indictment of the Russian intelligence officials, even though Trump had
   been briefed about the impending charges before he left Washington.
   Trump has asked Putin in the past whether Russia meddled in the
   election, and then in Twitter comments repeated Putin's denial of
   interference. Mueller's latest indictment accused no Americans of
   wrongdoing, but his 14-month investigation is continuing.

   The Republican Trump, rather than criticizing Russia for hacking into
   computer servers to linked to U.S. Democrats, laid the blame on his
   political opponents at the Democratic committee for lax computer
   security two years ago compared to the Republican National Committee.

   "And I heard that they were trying, or people were trying, to hack into
   the RNC, too," Trump said. "The Republican National Committee. But we
   had much better defenses. I've been told that by a number of people. We
   had much better defenses, so they couldn't. I think the DNC should be
   ashamed of themselves for allowing themselves to be hacked. They had
   bad defenses and they were able to be hacked. But I heard they were
   trying to hack the Republicans too. But -- and this may be wrong -- but
   they had much stronger defenses."

   On Saturday, in a tweet, Trump said, "These Russian individuals did
   their work during the Obama years. Why didn't Obama do something about
   it? Because he thought Crooked Hillary Clinton would win, that's why.
   Had nothing to do with the Trump Administration, but Fake News doesn't
   want to report the truth, as usual!"