Trump Reveals He Hasn’t Discussed Bounties With Vladimir Putin Before Dismissing Reports as ‘Fake News’

President Donald Trump revealed that the issue of Russian intel officers paying bounties to Taliban fighters for the deaths of U.S. military forces did not come up in a recent phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin. He then dismissed the allegations, saying “many people are calling it fake news,” during an interview for Axios with reporter Jonathan Swan.

According to The New York Times, the Pentagon and others are investigating whether three servicemen were killed as a result of efforts by the Russian Military Intelligence, the GRU, to aid the Taliban and other terrorists, specifically about payments by the GRU.

Swan mentioned the July 23rd phone call with Putin and plainly asked if the issue of bounties came up.

“No that was a phone call to discuss other things, and frankly, that’s an issue that many people said was fake news,” Trump replied.

“Who said it was fake news,” Swan replied.

“I think a lot of people. If you look at some of the wonderful folks from the Bush administration, some of them not any friends of mine were saying it was a fake issue,” Trump replied. “But a lot of people said it was a fake issue.”

Trump then pivoted to what was discussed on the call, namely nuclear proliferation. Swan then noted that he never discussed the bounty intel reports with Putin, to which Trump agreed that he has never discussed it with his Russian counterpart.

The debate over whether intel reports on Russian bounties for killing US soldiers is a fake news story or not will be left to another post. But there are a vast amount of media outlets—from across the political spectrum— reporting that government officials believe it it was a very real issue.

Watch above via HBO.