Trump Did Not Ask Putin About Bounties on Troops

President Trump did not ask President Vladimir V. Putin whether Russian operatives in Afghanistan had paid Taliban-affiliated militants bounties to kill American soldiers, Mr. Trump said in a new interview, dismissing a scenario backed by U.S. intelligence as “fake news.”

Mr. Trump made the comments in an interview on Tuesday with Axios scheduled to air on HBO next week. Portions of it were released early Wednesday.

Mr. Trump spoke by telephone last week with Mr. Putin, but during a public appearance on Monday declined to say whether he had raised the bounty issue.

“We don’t talk about what we discussed, but we had plenty of discussion,” he told reporters.

But Mr. Trump was more direct when pressed by the Axios reporter Jonathan Swan. “That was a phone call to discuss other things, and frankly that’s an issue that many people said was fake news,” he said.