Russian Foreign Minister Suggests More Undisclosed Trump-Putin Meetings
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov suggested there may have been additional meetings between President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin at the G20 Summit earlier this month.
In an interview with NBC’s Keir Simmons that aired Friday morning, Lavrov — who was one of the officials present at the Trump-Putin two-hour closed door meeting in Hamburg — hinted at the possibility of other encounters between the two leaders, but downplayed their importance.
When asked if Trump and Putin had met more than the now-disclosed three times, Lavrov deadpanned “well maybe they went to the toilet together, that was a fourth time.”
“That’s my question,” Simmons replied. “Were there occasions when they met?”
Lavrov replied to that with a strange analogy about kindergartens:
“When you are brought by your parents to a kindergarten, do you mix with the people who are waiting in the same room to start going to a classroom?”
“It’s the G20 though, not a kindergarten,” Simmons said.
“There is also a room where they get together before an event starts. They cannot arrive all at the same time on the bus,” Lavrov replied. And in a story published by NBC News online, Lavrov reportedly said they “might have met even much more than just three times.”
Simmons also asked about the roaring brouhaha caused by Trump’s meeting with Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in May, after it was reported that the president revealed highly classified information to the two regarding U.S. intelligence about an ISIS plot.
Lavrov contended that the intelligence was not secret, and had already been discovered by Russian special services.
The Russian foreign minister also denied the Kremlin interfered in the U.S. election, and claimed the president is engaged in a war against the establishment:
“The fight goes on. They want to make the life of this administration miserable. People try to speak about impeachment.”
But before you think that Lavrov is auditioning for a side-gig anchoring Fox & Friends, when Simmons asked him if Russia was on Trump’s side in that “fight,” he replied: “No, we are on the side of justice.”
Per Simmons, Lavrov also described the seizure of two Russian compounds in the U.S. by the Obama administration as “straightforward robbery.”
Watch the interview above, via MSNBC.
[image via screengrab]
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