2016 ELECTION/INTELLIGENCE/RUSSIA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Donald Trump, standing beside Russian leader Vladimir Putin, questioned the U.S. intelligence conclusion that Moscow meddled in the 2016 election, a move lawmakers of both parties said was a stunning alignment with an adversary. Mr. Trump said he and the Russian president ‘spent a great deal of time’ discussing the matter during their four hours of talks here on Monday, and said Mr. Putin ‘was extremely strong and powerful in his denial.’ Asked whom he believed—U.S. intelligence agencies or Mr. Putin—Mr. Trump said Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, ‘came to me [and] said, they think it’s Russia. I have President Putin, he just said it’s not Russia’…Mr. Trump spent much of Monday’s news conference attacking his Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, describing the probe into whether his associates colluded with Russia’s efforts to interfere in the election as a ‘disaster for our country’ that has undermined U.S. relations with Moscow. And he continued to blame the U.S., at least in part, for the poor state of those relations, saying the U.S. had been ‘foolish’”
-Rebecca Ballhaus, “Trump Questions Finding of Russia’s 2016 Meddling as He Appears With Putin,” The Wall Street Journal, July 16, 2018 10:04 pm