Bedminster,<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump said on Friday he was being sarcastic when he thanked Russian President Vladimir Putin for saving the United States money by ordering cuts in US diplomatic staff in Russia.<\/p>\n
Asked whether he was being sarcastic, Trump told reporters: \u201cIn order to reduce our payroll, absolutely. I think you know that,\u201d Trump said without explicitly criticising the move.<\/p>\n
Breaking nearly two weeks of silence on Putin\u2019s July 30 order cutting US embassy and consulate staff by nearly two thirds, Trump said on Thursday:<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m very thankful that he let go of a large number of people because now we have a smaller payroll,\u201d adding \u201cthere\u2019s no real reason for them to go back.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s remarks rekindled criticism of his kid-glove handling of Putin, especially as he has not shied away from being highly critical of members of his own party, including Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.<\/p>\n
Putin, reacting to new sanctions imposed by the US Congress and reluctantly signed into law by Trump, ordered Washington to cut its diplomatic and technical staff by 755 people by Sept. 1. Many of those affected likely will be local Russian staffers.<\/p>\n
It was also a reaction to former President Barack Obama expelling 35 Russian diplomats from the United States last December over the intelligence agency reports.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was just speaking to the Secretary (of State Rex Tillerson) and we\u2019re talking about coming up with an answer … by September 1st we\u2019ll have a response,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n
Congressional committees and a special counsel are investigating the conclusions of US intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the 2016 election campaign by hacking and other methods to help Trump, a Republican. They are also looking into possible collusion between the campaign and Russian officials. Moscow has repeatedly denied meddling in the election and Trump denies any campaign collusion.<\/p>\n
During his campaign and since becoming president, Trump has consistently called for better ties with Russia, declined to criticize Putin and refused to unequivocally embrace the conclusions of the intelligence agencies.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s remarks were immediately denounced by current and former US officials who have served both Republican and Democratic administrations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bedminster, President Donald Trump said on Friday he was being sarcastic when he thanked Russian President Vladimir Putin for saving the United States money by ordering cuts in US diplomatic staff in Russia. Asked whether he was being sarcastic, Trump told reporters: \u201cIn order to reduce our payroll, absolutely. I think you know that,\u201d Trump […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1908,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1907"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1907\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1909,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1907\/revisions\/1909"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}