US President Donald Trump said that Russian President Vladimir Putin would prefer Hillary Clinton as president, despite numerous allegations that Russia interfered in the 2016 US election to help Trump win, which Moscow has repeatedly denied.
“There are many things that I do that are the exact opposite of what he would want. So what I keep hearing about that he would have rather had Trump, I think ‘probably not,’ because when I want a strong military, you know she wouldn’t have spent the money on military,” Trump told CBN founder Pat Robertson in an interview to be aired on Thursday morning.
“When I want tremendous energy, we’re opening up coal, we’re opening up natural gas, we’re opening up fracking, all the things that he would hate, but nobody ever mentions that,” he added.
“We are the most powerful country in the world and we are getting more and more powerful because I’m a big military person. That’s what Putin doesn’t like about me,” Trump said. “Had Clinton won, our military would be decimated” and “our energy would be much more expensive.”
“He wants what’s good for Russia, and I want what’s good for the United States,” President Trump told Robertson. “From day one I wanted a strong military. He doesn’t want to see that.”
In the same interview, however, Trump said that he and Putin “get along very well,” and “that’s a good thing.”
Trump’s statement comes just a few days after his first face-to-face meeting with Putin on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Hamburg.
Following the meeting, a Syria ceasefire deal brokered by Russia, the US, and Jordan was announced. The truce has been in effect since Sunday in the southwestern Syrian provinces of Daraa, Quneitra, and Suwayda.