Hillary Clinton tweeted a reminder on Monday that in 2016 she predicted Donald Trump would become the puppet of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The former US secretary of state’s flashback comes after an article Friday in The New York Times said that the FBI had opened an investigation in 2017 into whether the US president had been secretly working on behalf of Russia.
The Times article was followed the next day by a report in The Washington Post that said Trump had repeatedly sought to conceal details of his personal interactions with Putin.
Clinton retweeted an excerpt from a 2016 presidential debate in which Trump said Putin had no respect for her.
The Democratic nominee’s response? “Well, that’s because he’d rather have a puppet as president of the United States.”
“And it’s pretty clear you won’t admit that the Russians have engaged in cyberattacks against the United States of America,” she continued. “That you encouraged espionage against our people, that you are willing to spout the Putin line, sign up for his wish list, break up NATO, do whatever he wants to do, and that you continue to get help from him because he has a very clear favorite in this race.”
On Monday, Trump denied having ever worked for the Russian government, describing the Times’ article as “the most insulting article I’ve ever had written [about me].”
He also said that he wasn’t “keeping anything under wraps” from his meetings with Putin and that he would be happy to share what the two heads of state had spoken about.