He’s either a pathological liar or he’s senile
by digby
Once again, how can someone like this be president?
President-elect Donald Trump told a radio interviewer in October, 2015 that he had met Vladimir Putin “one time…a long time ago” and that he “got along with him great” – a statement that conflicts with his later denials during the campaign that he had ever met or spoken with the Russian President…
Trump discusses Putin with conservative radio host Michael Savage, telling him “it’s wonderful” that the Russians were “really hitting ISIS hard” in Syria.
“Have you ever met Vladimir Putin?” Savage asks.
“Yes,” Trump answers, emphatically.
“You have?” Savage follows up.
“Yes, a long time ago. We got a long great, by the way.”
Savage then asked, “If you win the presidency, do you feel you can do business with Vladimir?
“Yes, I do. I think I would get along very well. I had the Miss Universe pageant, believe it or not, in Moscow two years ago. I got many of the Russian leaders, the top people in Russia, honeslty … These are people, they are looking to do things.”
Trump’s responses to Savage add to the confusing, flatly contradictory comments the President-elect has made about his past dealings with the Russian president. While in Moscow during the Miss Universe content, Trump had given an interview to MSNBC’s Thomas Roberts—who was co-hosting the event—in which, when asked whether he had a “relationship” with Putin, he replied: ” “I do have a relationship, and I can tell you that he’s very interested in what we’re doing here today.” He later said in a National Press Club speech in November 2015 that while in Moscow for the Miss Universe contest: “I spoke, indirectly and directly, with President Putin, who could not have been nicer.”
But when later repeatedly pressed last July 31 by ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos, Trump gave a very different answers about Putin. “I ‘ve never met him,” Trump said then. “I have no relationship with Putin. I don’t think I’ve ever met him. I never met him. … I mean if he’s in the same room or something. But I don’t think so.” …”
“You’ve never spoken to him on the phone?” Stephanopoulos followed up.
“I have never spoken to him on the phone, no,” Trump replied. “Well, I don’t know what it means by having a relationship. I mean he was saying very good things about me, but I don’t have a relationship with him. I didn’t meet him. I haven’t spent time with him. I didn’t have dinner with him. I didn’t go hiking with him. I don’t know — and I wouldn’t know him from Adam except I see his picture and I would know what he looks like.”
During the Stephanopoulos interview, Trump sought to clarify comments he made about Putin during a November 2015 Fox Business channel debate. In the debate, when discussing Putin and the Ukraine crisis, Trump said: “I got to know him [Putin] very well because we were both on 60 Minutes. We were stablemates, and we did very well that night.”
In the Stephanopoulos interview, Trump explained what he meant. We did 60 Minutes together,” Trump said. “By the way, not together-together, meaning he was probably shot in Moscow….And I was shot in New York.”
And to think Clinton was defeated by this man because everyone thought she was dishonest because of the emails and benghazi and other trumped up nonsense.
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