“The early indications are that this is going to cost the president dearly politically,” Roberts said of the president’s summit with Putin in Helsinki on Monday.
“Now, he is taking it on the chin, not just from Democrats but Republicans as well, and from literally every state across the nation,” Roberts continued.
During the press conference, the president refuted his own intelligence community’s conclusion that the Russian government interfered in the 2016 election, saying that he doesn’t “see any reason” why Moscow would have been behind the hacking.
“I think, diplomatically, you could probably say that the president’s strategy was [that] he wanted to engage Putin,” Roberts said. “He didn’t want to say anything that was going to tick him off. But there is a growing consensus across the land that tonight the president threw the United States under the bus."
The summit came just three days after the Justice Department indicted 12 Russian intelligence officers for their alleged roles hacking the Democratic National Committee during the election.
Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said Trump "must appreciate that Russia is not our ally,” and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) called the press conference “one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory," among multiple other critical comments from Republicans.
Fox News, CNN and MSNBC correspondents also tore into Trump for the press conference. Fox News analyst Daniel Hoffman said President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin's suggestion the U.S. may form a cybersecurity task force with Russia was like "inviting a criminal to come help you solve a crime."
Democrats ripped Trump's performance "pathetic" and "disgraceful."
Neil Cavuto of Fox Business calls Trump's press conference "disgusting", "That sets us back a lot." pic.twitter.com/R2ZIjyFyPR— Axios (@axios) July 16, 2018
Fox News host Sean Hannity praised President Trump's performance at a controversial news conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday, saying the U.S. leader was "very strong."
The Fox News host, a close friend of Trump and one of the president's most ardent media defenders, said that Trump was right to hone in on questions about the the Democratic National Committee's (DNC) handling of a 2016 cyberattack and the since-closed investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server.
"You were very strong at the end of that press conference," Hannity said in Trump's first interview following the press conference. "You said: "Where are the servers? What about what Peter Strzok says? Where are the 33,000 emails?"
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