Trump: U.S. will counteract any Russian election meddling in ‘18

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump pushed Tuesday for paper ballots in upcoming U.S. elections for security reasons, and said the country was ready for any Russian attempts to meddle in the midterm elections.

"We’ll counteract whatever they do, we’ll counteract it very strongly and we are having strong background systems," he said at a White House news conference with Swedish prime minister Stefan Löfven. "We haven’t been given credit for this, but we’ve actually been working very hard on the ’18 election and the ’20 election coming up."

But beyond making the case for backup ballot systems — "it’s called paper, not highly complex computers, paper" — Trump's suggestions on combating future Russian meddling have been rare and short on specifics.

Though the president has agreed with intelligence assessments that lay the blame on the Kremlin for meddling efforts in the 2016 presidential election, he still maintains other countries could have also been responsible and said again Tuesday that meddling efforts did not affect any votes in 2016.

Questions about Russian meddling and alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin were only part of the latest maelstrom engulfing the Trump administration — plagued by infighting on newly announced tariffs on steel and aluminum while a steady stream of top aides continue to depart Trump's service.

 Source : nbcnews