Majority believes Russia has dirt on Trump: Poll

Grigory Dukor | Reuters

President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin shake hands as they hold a joint news conference after their meeting in Helsinki, Finland July 16, 2018.

It’s been a week since President Donald Trump’s widely panned meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and a new poll shows that a majority of Americans believes the Kremlin has compromising information on the American leader.

By a 51-to-35 percent margin, U.S. voters are convinced the Russian government has dirt on Trump, according to a Quinnipiac University National Poll.

At a press conference in Helsinki on July 16, Trump stunned the world by accepting Putin’s denial that Russia attacked the 2016 U.S. election, thus contradicting the findings of 17 U.S. intelligence agencies.

“I don’t see any reason why it would be Russia,” Trump said. He tried to walk it back a day later by saying he had misspoken.

Trump’s performance at the summit, widely criticized on Capitol Hill by both parties, has raised further suspicions that Moscow has collected compromising material on the president as part of a wider campaign to influence the American political system. Allegations of the existence of such material surfaced with the disclosure of a dossier compiled by a former British intelligence officer who was paid by Democrats to collect damaging information on Trump during the 2016 campaign.