Clinton, in NYC, assails Trump for not speaking 'up for our country' after Putin meeting

Hillary Clinton assailed President Donald Trump on Saturday for not having “spoken up for our country” after his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki.

“It doesn’t seem our president even cares,” Clinton said during a 40-minute interview with Steve Jobs’ widow at a festival in Central Park. “He wants to be friends with Putin for reasons we are all trying to figure out.”

The 2016 Democratic presidential candidate also said Trump was alienating allies and allowing countries like China to more effectively exert their influence.

“We’re losing friends and allies who are worried about what we might do next and we’re leaving vacuums for others to fill who may or may not have any of the same interests and goals that we have,” she said.

Clinton spoke with Laurene Powell Jobs, the founder of a nonprofit that focuses on expanding economic and social opportunities, at OZY Fest, a music, politics, ideas and food festival.

Clinton was most searing in her criticism of Trump’s approach to Putin and to Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election and the country's attempt to meddle in the November 2018 midterm elections.

“This idea that somehow we are not sure where our own president stands is deeply disturbing and the best way to deal with that is to vote in November,” she said to cheers.

Clinton acknowledged that Putin “and I did not exactly get along.”

“But to be fair, hardly anybody who believes in freedom gets along with him because he is always trying to dominate and intimidate and direct how people and nations behave,” she said.

The Russian leader is “quite adept at reading people and understanding how to manipulate them,” Clinton said. With no one taking notes in Trump’s one-on-one Monday meeting with him, “Putin is basically telling the world what was decided . . . And we’re hearing crickets from the White House. Nothing is being put out that is in any way contradictory in replacing the Putin agenda with whatever Trump is doing. It’s alarming, and it is alarming on many, many levels.”

She added her voice to widespread criticism of the White House’s initial willingness to consider acceding to Putin’s request that the United States allow Russia to question some U.S. officials, including Michael McFaul, a former ambassador to Russia and critic of the country’s human rights record.

“The idea that the president even considered for a nanosecond turning over a former ambassador to Russia, to Russia, Mike McFaul, was simply unbelievable, and enough of an outcry happened that they backed off and said they wouldn’t do it,” she said.

Clinton said Trump was sowing mistrust of the United States abroad and said she didn’t see any coherent strategy in the president’s approach to foreign policy.

“Pretty soon we become less relevant and less able to act in our own interests,” Clinton said.