President Trump has reneged his plan to form a cybersecurity plan with Russia on Sunday following intense criticism from Capitol Hill.
He shared his intentions to launch a collaborative effort with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Twitter just hours earlier.
Trump said the proposed group was aimed to solve cybersecurity issues like election interference, the very act for which Russia is currently being investigated. The announcement came a few days after the U.S. leader met with Putin at the G-20 summit in Berlin.
Putin & I discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 9, 2017
Almost immediately, the idea was rejected by politicians, Reuters reports. “It’s not the dumbest idea I have ever heard but it’s pretty close,” Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said to NBC’s Meet the Press. Former defense secretary Ash Carter described the plan to CNN bluntly: “This is like the guy who robbed your house proposing a working group on burglary.”
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin explained that Trump and Putin had agreement to form “a cyber unit to make sure that there was absolutely no interference whatsoever, that they would work on cyber security together.”
On Sunday evening, Trump backtracked saying that he “doesn’t think it can happen.”
The fact that President Putin and I discussed a Cyber Security unit doesn’t mean I think it can happen. It can’t-but a ceasefire can,& did!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 10, 2017
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