Susan B. Glasser at The New Yorker posted a story today that says that Trump is actively seeking a face-to-face summit meeting with Vladimir Putin and that he wants it to happen ASAP, like this summer.
Negotiations with the Kremlin have been under way for weeks. “There’s no stopping him,” a senior Administration official familiar with the internal deliberations said. “He’s going to do it. He wants to have a meeting with Putin, so he’s going to have a meeting with Putin.”
Ever since Putin’s reëlection in March to another six-year term, Trump has been pressing for a Putin summit, dismissing advisers’ warnings about the political dangers of such a meeting, given the ongoing special-counsel investigation into whether Trump and his campaign colluded with Russia as it interfered in the 2016 U.S. election on Trump’s behalf. With the Russia allegations swirling, Trump never had the formal meeting he wanted with Putin last year—settling for just two brief encounters on the sidelines of international gatherings—but he has clearly never given up on his campaign vision of closer ties with the Russian strongman, whose autocratic rule he has often praised.
Negotiations began in earnest, the senior Administration official told me, after Trump disregarded his aides’ “DO NOT CONGRATULATE” warning in his post-election phone call with Putin, in March. During the conversation, Trump both congratulated the Russian leader on his election—which Western election observers said had failed to offer voters a real choice—and issued Putin an invitation to the White House. After the call, the Kremlin quickly released word of the invitation and began publicly lobbying to pin down a date for a summit, but, privately, the Russian President balked at the Oval Office as the meeting’s venue. “Putin doesn’t want to come to Washington. Putin wants to meet in a third-party location,” the senior Administration official told me. “Originally, Trump didn’t want to do that,” but the Wall Street Journal reported last week that Putin asked Austria’s new hard-right populist Chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, to arrange the summit for Vienna, and the White House is considering the proposal.
“You know, we spend probably twenty-five per cent of our time talking about Russia, and I said, ‘Wouldn’t it be better if they were here?’ ” Trump told Baier aboard Air Force One. He went on to muse about how well he would get along with Putin, if only they could meet. “Now, I think I would probably have a good relationship with him. Or I will be able to talk to him better than if you call somebody on the telephone to talk,” Trump said.
Will it happen? What will happen if it does?
Wow, [farting noise]'s dementia is showing.
Volodya is pretty smooth. He can presumably handle an excited fanboy. But I wonder how this will play out with the respective entourages.
He’s gonna give back Alaska.
Is it time for Trump’s performance review already?
Sarah Palinskova has a nice ring to it.
Come to think of it, if she’s part of the deal it might be worth it!
John_Mace:
Sarah Palinskova has a nice ring to it.
Come to think of it, if she’s part of the deal it might be worth it!
Oh, Melania’s replacement. That is believable as all get out. Honestly.
As to Putin-loving summt, no it won’t happen here. Out of the question. I can even see Pence refusing to heel and maybe not imitate water bottle placement if present at such a meeting.
A neutral place, maybe. Russia, most likely. Cofeve will be served on the site of Orangefuck’s new hotel site at a groundbreaking ceremony.
Putin will suggest a game of solitaire, and everything gets a little hazy for the President after that; despite having one of the best memories of all time.
Trump says July . John Bolton is putting it together:
“I think the fact of the summit itself is a deliverable,” Bolton said after talks with Putin and other Russian officials. “There are a lot of issues to talk about that have accumulated, and I think this was one of the reasons why President Trump believed so strongly that it was time to have this kind of meeting. And as you can see, President Putin agreed.”
So in just a few weeks, the POTUS will have a one-on-one summit with the guy who is accused of illegally helping him get elected.
You gotta be fucking kidding me.
In one article, Bolton said that they would definitely be discussing Russian interference in American elections.
I am sure that Bolton was talking about 2016, but somehow I doubt that that’s the year that Trump will be talking about and, certainly, not in a negative fashion.
Happy Midterms everyone!
Trump will decide that the best way to help the coal miners is to go ahead on the Exxon deal with Russia. Also, he will sign an executive order releasing all those Russian orphans from Hillary’s sex farm.
Moose and squirrel are, of course, done for.
asahi
June 27, 2018, 10:26pm
14
Snowboarder_Bo:
Trump says July . John Bolton is putting it together:So in just a few weeks, the POTUS will have a one-on-one summit with the guy who is accused of illegally helping him get elected.
You gotta be fucking kidding me.
Oh he’s not kidding. They’re gonna talk about how they can illegally re-“elect” the Republican congress.
jasg
June 28, 2018, 3:24am
16
He’ll come back with instructions to move Jefferson Beauregard to the Supremes and Rudy to AG to take care of Mueller.
Why is the press not screaming about this? I’m livid about the summit but I’m absolutely apopetlic about the fact that I see nary a peep out of any media outlet or Democratic leadership or any Independent politician even noting the fact that Trump is going to go collude face-to-face with Putin right before the next round of elections.
We’re all kinda stunned by him eating a live bat on Fox and Friends. Didn’t see that coming!
Josh Marshall, the editor of Talking Points Memo, brought up this little nugget from Russia state TV, in a brief story about the summit.
talking head on Russian TV:
Cybersecurity is a topic for the summit. Because what are the main accusations we hear in the past years from the American side? That our great and terrible Russian hackers invaded the American space? Which many see as aggression against the country – and that we caused some trouble there? What trouble did we cause? We just elected Trump. That’s all.
Helsinki on 16 July. Prolly no time to waste in implementing things for the midterm elections.
A terse synchronized statement issued by the Kremlin and the White House said Putin and Trump will discuss bilateral issues and international relations. The announcement comes a day after Trump’s National Security Adviser John Bolton held talks with Putin in Moscow to lay the groundwork for the summit.
“I’ve said it from Day One, getting along with Russia and with China and with everybody is a very good thing,” Trump said Wednesday. “It’s good for the world. It’s good for us. It’s good for everybody.”
He said they would discuss Syria, Ukraine and “many other subjects.”