Donald Trump repeats his Mostly False claim about Hillary Clinton, Russia and uranium

Russia was mentioned 61 times by reporters and President Donald Trump during Trump’s news conference on Feb. 16, 2017.

At one point, Trump said something about the country that was an echo for readers of PolitiFact Wisconsin:

“And by the way, it would be great if we could get along with Russia, just so you understand that. Now tomorrow, you’ll say ‘Donald Trump wants to get along with Russia, this is terrible.’ It’s not terrible; it’s good. We had Hillary Clinton try and do a reset. We had Hillary Clinton give Russia 20 percent of the uranium in our country. You know what uranium is, right? This thing called nuclear weapons and other things, like lots of things are done with uranium, including some bad things.”

He repeated the 20 percent claim twice more.

It was almost word-for-word what Trump said while campaigning in Waukesha, Wis., in September 2016. He said then that Clinton “gave up 20 percent of America’s uranium supply to Russia.”

Our rating of that claim was Mostly False.

As we reported at the time:

Trump’s reference was to Russia’s nuclear power agency buying a controlling interest in a Toronto-based company. That company has mines, mills and tracts of land in Wyoming, Utah and other U.S. states equal to about 20 percent of U.S. uranium production capacity (not produced uranium).

Clinton was secretary of state at the time, but she didn’t have the power to approve or reject the deal. The State Department was only one of nine federal agencies that signed off on the deal, and only President Barack Obama had the power to veto it.

Go here to read that fact check.