Russia and Putin · First term · № 32
Announced talks with Putin on a joint 'Cyber Security unit', then dropped the idea the same day
“Putin & I discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded..”
- Said
- Subject
- Joint cyber security unit
- Type
- Intelligence and security
- Topic
- Elections
- Era
- First term
What happened
Two days after his first meeting with Putin at the G20 summit in Hamburg, Trump wrote on July 9, 2017, that he had pressed Putin twice about election meddling, that Putin 'vehemently denied it', and that the two had discussed forming a joint cyber security unit. He added that it was 'time to move forward in working constructively with Russia'. Senator Lindsey Graham called the idea 'pretty close' to the 'dumbest idea I've ever heard', and Senator Marco Rubio wrote that it was akin to partnering with Syria's Bashar al-Assad on a chemical weapons unit. That evening Trump wrote that the fact the unit was discussed 'doesn't mean I think it can happen. It can't'. In the same series of posts he wrote that sanctions were not discussed with Putin and that nothing would be done on them until 'the Ukrainian & Syrian problems are solved'.