In a new interview, Trump finally admitted what we knew all along: he never challenged Russia for paying bounties to the Taliban to kill U.S. service members in Afghanistan. Trump had multiple opportunities to warn against targeting U.S. troops, but he refused. Instead, he actually went out of his way to defend Russia. This is a complete failure of leadership and a dereliction of his duty as commander in chief to protect American troops.

Trump finally admitted that he did not raise the issue of Russian bounties on U.S. troops with Putin.

TRUMP: “I have never discussed it with him, no.”

Trump tried to change the subject away from Russia instead of challenging them over bounties when pressed.

TRUMP: “You know it’s interesting, nobody ever brings up China. They always bring Russia, Russia, Russia.”

Trump then went out of his way to repeatedly defend Russia when asked about Russia arming the Taliban.

TRUMP: “Well we supplied weapons when they were fighting Russia too.”

TRUMP: “Russia doesn’t want anything to do with Afghanistan… The last thing that Russia wants to do is get too much involved with Afghanistan.”

The White House has refused to say whether Trump pressed Putin on interference after new warnings from the U.S. intelligence community.

ABC News: “Stephanopoulos also challenged the chief of staff on warnings issued by the U.S. intelligence community this week of potential foreign interference in the election, including by Russia, and whether it was a topic of conversation between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Meadows did not answer the latter question, but pointed to the ‘hundreds of millions of dollars’ invested in intelligence and election security and attempted to differentiate between attempts to impact the campaign and successful efforts.”