“I have always had a fantastic relationship with President Putin. It was impeded by the Russia hoax.”

Joint press conference at the Russia-United States Summit in Alaska

There was no "hoax." The Republican-led, bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, after more than three years of investigation, over 200 witness interviews, and more than a million pages of documents, concluded in its five-volume, 1,300-plus-page report that the Russian government engaged in an "aggressive, multi-faceted effort" to influence the 2016 presidential election.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report reached the same conclusion, finding Russia interfered "in sweeping and systematic fashion," and the investigation indicted more than two dozen Russian nationals and entities. The U.S. intelligence community, under Trump's own first administration in 2017, likewise formally assessed that Putin ordered an influence campaign targeting the election.

The senator who released the Senate's final Russia volume in August 2020 as the committee's acting chairman was Marco Rubio, the man who now serves as Trump's own Secretary of State. The "Russia hoax" premise Trump used to flatter Putin in Alaska is contradicted by the documented findings of his own party's senators and his own government's intelligence agencies.

"The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion." — Report of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III, Volume I (2019)