Hannity praises Trump while Trump praises Putin

Donald Trump sat down with Sean Hannity shortly after his press conference with Russian president Vladimir Putin following their summit in Helsinki, Finland. Not surprisingly, Hannity had strong words of praise for Trump, who in turn had strong praise for Putin. Hannity began the interview saying, “You literally just finished the press conference with president Putin moments ago. A lot of stuff came up. You were very strong at the end of the press conference.” The “very strong” Hannity was crediting Trump with was about the president asking about email servers and, of course, former FBI agent Peter Strzok in response to a question about Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Trump, on the other hand, praised Putin, saying, “I thought that president Putin was very strong.” This interview took place before Trump would become aware of the negative reaction to the press conference back home. Many people, even those in his own party, took umbrage with the fact that Trump believed Putin over our intelligence community when the authoritarian leader told him there was no Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Still, Trump considered the summit a bigly success, saying, “Well, I think we’re doing really well with Russia as of today. I thought we were doing horribly before today. I mean horribly. Dangerously.” “It was that big, that dramatic today?” Hannity asked. Trump replied, “I think it was great today, but I think it was really bad five hours ago.”