Donald Trump Defies Criticism of Putin Meeting: ‘We Cannot Exclusively Focus on the Past’

President Donald Trump defended his comments referring to the American Russian investigation after his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland.

The president defied media and establishment political critics accusing him of allowing Putin to lie about his attempts to influence the 2016 American presidential election.

“As I said today and many times before, ‘I have GREAT confidence in MY intelligence people,’” Trump said on Twitter on Monday.

Putin said during the press conference that he did not try to influence the 2016 election, a statement that Trump called “extremely strong and powerful.”

Trump weighed in on the controversy created after his press conference with Putin as he flew back to Washington, DC, aboard Air Force One. He urged Americans to spend less time criticizing Russia’s bad behavior in the past but to instead focus on the future.

“[I]n order to build a brighter future, we cannot exclusively focus on the past,” he wrote. “As the world’s two largest nuclear powers, we must get along!”