Don warns Russia meddlers

President Trump on Tuesday insisted the United States is “very strongly” taking measures to protect the election system from Russian meddling in the 2018 midterm elections and beyond.

“We’ll counteract whatever they do. We’ll counteract it very strongly. And we have backup systems, and we haven’t been given credit [for] this but we’re working very hard on the ’18 election and the ’20 election coming up,” Trump said at the White House during a joint news conference with Sweden’s Prime Minister Stefan Löfven.

The president offered no specifics other than to suggest that pa- per ballots be used as a backup to voting machines.

But in response to a question from a Swedish reporter, Trump said he had no concerns about Russian meddling in the midterms, and again insisted that the Kremlin’s interference in the 2016 election had no bearing on the outcome.

“The Russians had no impact on our votes whatsoever. But certainly there was meddling and probably from other countries and maybe other individuals,” Trump said.

The president said the US would closely monitor the vote to ensure its integrity.

“I think you have to be really watching very closely. You don’t want your system of votes to be compromised in any way. And we won’t allow that to happen. We’re doing a very deep study and coming out with some very strong suggestions on the ’18 election,” Trump said before predicting that the GOP would do well in the midterms because of the hot economy.

“But you have to be very vigilant. One of the things [with] voting [is] called paper. Not highly complex computers. Paper. And a lot of states are doing that. They’re going to a paper backup,” he said.