July 16, Helsinki Finland, United States President Trump meets with Russian President Putin for a political summit to discuss important world issues including that relating to terrorism in and from Syria, allegations of Russia intervening in the 2016 elections, and the relationship between the United States and Russia among other things.

The two presidents gave their introductory speeches outlining their overall thoughts on each current world event. However, many watchers’ attention might have been drawn when both presidents gave their responses regarding Russia’s supposed intervention with the 2016 United States election.

Shortly after the introductory speeches, a question was directed towards President Putin. A reporter present at the summit asked, “Why should Americans and why should President Trump believe your statement that Russia did not intervene in the 2016 election?”

And in response, Trump immediately jumped in answering a question not directed towards him.

Trump began his answer with unrelated information pertaining to his opinion that democrats have an easier time winning an election because “the electoral college is much more advantageous for democrats before eventually saying that there was no collusion. ”

The information Trump has presented at this press conference seems to undermine the “opinions” of four major intelligence agencies based within the united states: the CIA, FBI, NSA, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

In January 2017, these four organizations published a report stating that Putin and the Russian government had created an organized plan in order to influence the results of the 2016 United States election.

It was found that hackers based in Russia were in fact infiltrating documents from the Democratic National Committee. Even though it is confirmed that Russian hackers infiltrated documents from the DNC, it is not entirely confirmed that the hackers influenced the 2016 United States election in any way.

Through the Mueller investigations that Trump refers to as the cause of the “decline in U.S relations with Russia”, 12 Russian intelligence officers were indicted.

Putin seemed to be unaware of this situation at the conference as when it was brought up, he states, “I don’t know the full extent of the situation.”

Trump had denied the claims that Russian collusion happened when the report had come out but agreed with the fact that the Russian hackers existed. However, something was quite peculiar about the responses Trump gave at the summit pertaining to the supposed 2016 Russian collusion.

There was a plethora of repetition in Trump’s responses. One of his responses reads as such, “There was no collusion. I didn’t know the President. There was nobody to collude with. There was no collusion with the campaign.”

While Trump seems to believe in the statement with all his heart himself, he failed to present the facts supporting or refuting the supposed Russian collusion.

In addition, if he was so sure that Russian did not interfere in the election, the Mueller probe should be looked at as a good thing. The Mueller probe, which has been transparent thus far, would not be able to find evidence for an event that did not happen and thus instead provide evidence that the interference did not happen.

<Brian Lee Diamond Bar High 11th Grade>