Fox’s Jacqui Heinrich Gives Brutal Review: ‘Putin Came In and Steamrolled’ Trump

Fox News Senior White House Correspondent Jacqui Heinrich offered a brutal assessment of an awkward and confusing joint press conference featuring President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.

The two leaders met on Friday at an Alaska military base for negotiations designed to bring peace to Ukraine following Russia’s invasion of the former Soviet republic, which has led to hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths.

Heinrich reported from the location and did not demur in her harsh assessment of what she witnessed personally.

Brian Kilmeade opened by admitting he was “surprised there were no questions. I was surprised there were no details on what progress was made,” to which she replied, “You and me and everyone else in this room were surprised. ”

“We were told we would have an opportunity to put questions to both leaders after a joint press conference in the event the meeting went well enough that they could set the stage for a second meeting,” she added. “And President Trump said if that didn’t happen, he was likely to call off the joint presser and just address the media solo and send people home. Neither of those things happened. ”

“And what was really stunning to me as someone who has been in a lot of these press conferences was a few things that were very unusual,” she said. “You had Putin come out and address the press first. We are on U.S. soil here. And that left the media scrambling to get their headsets in. Usually, it is the leader of the country — the host country of a summit that speaks first and addresses. Putin started off in Russian. And we all had to get our heads set on and listen to him rattle off the diatribe about the history of the U.S. and Russia.”

“The way that it felt in the room was not good,” she reported. “It did not seem like things went well, and it seemed like Putin came in and steamrolled, got right into what he wanted to say. And got his photo next to the president and then left. Of course, that is only the piece of the picture that we have right now, and certainly President Trump, who is the host and who is, the president, would not want to, I think, enable something that would make him look weak.”