One senior White House official said Mr. Trump had never seen the briefing cards. It was that rationale that Mr. Trump appeared to embrace on Wednesday. “Bush tried to get along, but didn’t have the ‘smarts,’” Mr. Trump wrote. Still, since his first face-to-face meeting with Mr. Putin over the summer, Mr. Trump has consistently refused to criticize the Russian president directly. An interview with Mr. Dershowitz on Fox News on Tuesday and an opinion piece by Mr. Dershowitz published on Wednesday did not include the exact phrasing that Mr. Trump used in his tweets.

Source: New York Times March 21, 2018 23:11 UTC