Michael Morell told ABC News’ Martha Raddatz on “This Week” on Sunday that Putin “played this perfectly”. Morell also said Putin recruited Trump as an “unwitting agent of the Russian Federation”.
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“And Donald Trump didn’t even understand, right, that Putin was playing him”, added Morell, a former acting and deputy Central Intelligence Agency director.
Republican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence on Friday dismissed the charge that Russian leader Vladimir Putin manipulated Donald Trump by complimenting him.
Morell wrote that while he is neither a registered Democrat nor a Republican and has never made his preference for president public, he chose to publicly declare his support for Clinton in this election.
Next, the viewers are shown some of Trump’s many controversial proposals that appear to benefit Moscow, including his criticism of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation as “obsolete” and pointing to a Washington Post article from last month titled “Trump Campaign Guts GOP’s Anti-Russia Stance on Ukraine”. “He responded just as Mr. Putin had calculated”, Morell wrote.
Aides say Clinton will outline her economic plans and argue that Trump is only focused on the wealthiest Americans.
“I never saw her bring politics into the Situation Room”.
Morell is now a senior counselor at the advisory firm Beacon Global Strategies.
The Democrat had told Fox News Sunday that Federal Bureau of Investigation director James Comey said her “answers were truthful” about whether she sent or received classified material via private email.
Such pro-Trump views may be the result of similar opinions expressed by media controlled by the Russian government, sociologists say. That in turn, could lead to more Russian expansionism.
USA officials have said any reference to militants taking part was initially dropped for classification reasons. “These are disgraceful statements that betray our longstanding values and national interests embraced by Presidents of both parties”, said the letter, which among others have been signed by the former Secretary of State Madeline Albright and the former Defence Secretary Leon Panetta.
“I have said during the interview and in many other occasions over the past months that what I told the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which he said was truthful, is consistent with what I have said publicly”, Clinton said. “She always protected it”, he said.
“Mr. Trump is an outsider” and not a traditional politician, Manafort added.
Early this week, he questioned Trump’s relationship with Putin, which the Republican nominee has denied.
“I’m not disavowing that Putin called me a genius”.
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These comments are a departure from what he told MSNBC in 2013. U.S. media has said that intelligence officials believe the emails, one of which exposed a plot by party officials to try and smear Bernie Sanders, were hacked by the Russian government. The IRS has said that an audit does not legally preclude him from releasing his tax returns.
