Trump prepares for Putin’s visit to Washington, amidst outrage
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Amidst bipartisan outrage in Washington over US President Donald Trump’s relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump doubled down Thursday by saying he is expecting the Russian leader to visit the U.S. in fall.
Talks are already underway for the visit.
Trump has come in for bipartisan criticism for what many saw as his unsettling embrace of the Russian strongman this week — and his seeming disavowal of his own intelligence agencies and their assessment that Moscow meddled in the 2016 election.
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” 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.”
“There’s been a lot of heat and very little light following that press conference,” he told Catholic television network EWTN.
“I watched the president’s interaction with President Putin after their one-on-one meeting … The President was aiming towards 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 with CNBC television, Trump said “getting along with President Putin, getting along with Russia’s a positive, not a negative.
“Now with that being said if it doesn’t work out I’ll be the worst enemy he’s ever had,” he said of Putin.
“I look forward to our second meeting so that we can start implementing some of the many things discussed,” Trump said.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said that meeting may come this fall.
“President Trump asked (National Security Advisor John Bolton) to invite President Putin to Washington in the fall and those discussions are already underway,” Sanders tweeted.
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.
– ‘I don’t know what happened’ –
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 listed the topics discussed as “stopping terrorism, security for Israel, nuclear proliferation, cyber attacks, trade, Ukraine, Middle East peace, North Korea and more.”
The top Senate Democrat, Chuck Schumer, had a scathing reaction to news that Trump planned to invite Putin to Washington.
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