‘False, Malicious and Absurd’: White House Admits Trump Had Second Non-Meeting Meeting With Putin, Blasts Reports It Was Secret
‘It Is Not Merely Perfectly Normal, It Is Part of a President’s Duties’ the White House Falsely Claims
Amid massive reporting President Donald Trump had a secret, second meeting with President Vladimir Putin while at the G-20 in Germany, the White House is pushing back.
In a lengthy, unsigned statement, the White House calls reports Trump met with Putin for an hour, accompanied by no American, and in secret with just Putin’s translator present, “false, malicious and absurd.”
Tuesday Bloomberg reported the meeting took place, and likened it the meetings Jeff Sessions had on the “sidelines” where all the real business is conducted.Â
“President Trump spoke with many leaders during the course of the evening. As the dinner was concluding, President Trump went over to Mrs. Trump, where he spoke briefly with President Putin,” the White House said in a statement. “When President Trump spoke to President Putin, the two leaders used the Russian translator, since the American translator did not speak Russian,” the White House explains.
“There was no ‘second meeting’ between President Trump and President Putin,” the White House stunningly claims, “just a brief conversation at the end of a dinner. The insinuation that the White House has tried to ‘hide’ a second meeting is false, malicious and absurd.”
“It is not merely perfectly normal, it is part of a President’s duties, to interact with world leaders,” the White House, assuming Americans are just plain stupid, claimed.
All foreign policy experts who have weighed in dispute that this was “perfectly normal,” and dispute that it would have happened without another American present.Â
“Throughout the G20 and in all his other foreign engagements, President Trump has demonstrated American leadership by representing our interests and values on the world stage.”
That last statement is particularly devious. If Trump had been “representing our interests and values on the world stage,” he would have pushed Putin against the wall, figuratively if not literally, and told him to stop his hacking of America’s election systems.
President Trump’s behavior is increasingly disconcerting. That he would spend an hour alone with President Vladimir Putin and then hide the meeting is beyond suspicious.
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