Trump tells reporters it’s “none of your business” what he tells Putin – CBS News

President Trump, asked by a reporter if he’ll bring up election meddling with Russian President Vladimir Putin when he meets with him this week, replied, “I’ll have a very good conversation with him. What I say to him is none of your business.”

As he departed the White House for his trip to Asia, Mr. Trump also expressed optimism about progress on a humanitarian border aid bill.

“We are moving along very nicely with a bipartisan bill in the Senate,” he told reporters at the White House. He spoke with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi before he departed and said, “I think that Nancy wants to get something done.”

However, the bill in the Senate differs from the House version, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has been critical of the measure passed by the House Thursday, calling it a “go-nowhere proposal filled with poison-pill riders which the president would veto.” 

The president was also asked about a photo depicting the tragic death of a migrant father and his two-year-old daughter, who drowned trying to cross the Rio Grande this week. He said that if Congress “fixed the laws,” this wouldn’t happen. And he noted that the river currents can be rough. If we had the right laws, he said, “those people wouldn’t be coming up…they wouldn’t be trying” to come to the U.S. 

Mr. Trump is leaving for Japan and South Korea, where he’ll meet with other world leaders at the G20. 

There, Mr. Trump is expected to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Putin, among other world leaders. The international trip comes amid escalating tensions with Iran and as a trade deal with China still has yet to come to fruition. 

On Tuesday, Mr. Trump threatened the “obliteration” of parts of Iran if it attacks anything belonging to the U.S. Mr. Trump authorized new sanctions against Iran’s supreme leader and a cyber attack on Iran after Iran shot down a U.S. drone last week. 

“Iran’s very ignorant and insulting statement, put out today, only shows that they do not understand reality,” Mr. Trump tweeted Tuesday morning. “Any attack by Iran on anything American will be met with great and overwhelming force. In some areas, overwhelming will mean obliteration.”

Mr. Trump’s schedule was pushed back Wednesday, as he spoke to a supportive crowd at the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in D.C.  

Mr. Trump arrives in Osaka, Japan, Thursday night for the G20 summit and a host of sideline meetings Then on Saturday he flies to Seoul, South Korea, to meet with South Korean President Moon Jae-in. He will return to D.C. on Sunday. This marks his 13th trip abroad as president. 

— CBS News’ Kathryn Watson and Arden Farhi contributed to this report. 

This content was originally published here.