Trump plans to host Putin this fall

No Russian leader has visited White House in decade

WASHINGTON - US President Donald Trump, under fire over his Helsinki summit with Vladimir Putin, doubled down on Thursday by saying he looks forward to meeting the Russian president again - with talks already underway for a visit to Washington in the fall.

No Russian leader has visited the White House in nearly a decade.

Speaking on Friday in Moscow, Anatoly Antonov, Russia's ambassador to the US, said Putin and Trump should continue to have direct contact after their Helsinki summit this week which he called a "key event" in international politics.

Moscow is ready to discuss the possible visit by Putin to Washington, he added.

Trump has come in for bipartisan criticism for what many saw as his unsettling embrace of the Russian leader this week－and his seeming disavowal of his own intelligence agencies and their assessment that Moscow meddled in the 2016 election. Moscow denies such claims.

The backlash has thrust Trump onto the defensive, leading to days of conflicting statements from both the president and the White House.

But Trump has largely shrugged off the criticism and took aim at the "fake news media" on Thursday for failing to recognize his achievements.

"The Summit with Russia was a great success, except with the real enemy of the people, the Fake News Media," Trump said on Twitter. "The Fake News Media wants so badly to see a major confrontation with Russia, even a confrontation that could lead to war."

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Trump's goal was to "redirect" two countries "that'd been on a bad path".

"The president was aiming toward creating a channel for communication and dialogue, and he achieved that," he said, adding he would be "very surprised" if a transcript from the meeting was released.

In an interview, Trump said "getting along with President Putin, getting along with Russia's a positive, not a negative.

"I look forward to our second meeting so that we can start implementing some of the many things discussed," he said.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said that meeting may come this fall.

The invitation came as an apparent surprise to the Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats when he was told about it during a live interview at the Aspen Security Forum in Aspen, Colorado.

"Say that again?" Coats asked the interviewer.

"OK. That's going to be special," he said, laughing.

Coats also said that three days after Trump met with Putin, he does not know what the two men discussed.

"I don't know what happened in that meeting," he said.

The two leaders held two hours of closed-door talks with no one else present but the interpreters.

"If he had asked me how that ought to be conducted, I would have suggested a different way," Coats said.

Trump on Thursday said the topics discussed included terrorism, Israel, nuclear proliferation, cyberattacks, trade, Ukraine, Middle East peace and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Several Democratic senators were quick to voice their opposition to a second summit.

The top Senate Democrat, Chuck Schumer, had a scathing reaction to news that Trump planned to invite Putin to Washington.

"Until we know what happened at that two hour meeting in Helsinki, the president should have no more one-on-one interactions with Putin. In the United States, in Russia, or anywhere else," he said in a statement.

Senate Republicans also were attempting to dissuade Trump from holding another summit with Putin. When asked about the possibility of a second summit, Senate Republican Whip John Cornyn of Texas hung his head and quipped, "maybe in a year or two", thehill.com reported on Thursday.

AFP, AP and Zhao Huanxin in Washington contributed to this story.