The current president still has yet to ever utter a word directly critical of Vladimir Putin. It’s worth also recalling trump’s emphatic statement in November that he fully believed the Russian prime minister when Putin told trump that he’d done nothing to interfere in US elections. trump went so far as to defend Putin’s personal honor over the allegations: “I think he is very insulted by it,” trump said, “which is not good for our country.” He further implied that US national security leaders were less trustworthy on the matter than Putin, calling them “political hacks.”