Trump ‘Didn’t Want to be Disrespectful’ to Putin During Meeting With Euro Leaders
President Donald Trump revealed the reason for not calling Vladimir Putin with other European leaders present, telling Fox & Friends host he thought that to be “disrespectful” to his Russian counterpart.
Trump called in to Fox & Friends Tuesday morning and detailed, at length, the details behind the Monday multilateral meeting he hosted with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.
Charlie Hurt asked, “During the meeting yesterday, when you decided to call Vladimir Putin, what was the reaction among the other people in the room, and what was President Putin’s reaction to being brought into a phone call in the middle of your meeting?”
“Well, I think they expected it,” Trump replied. “I didn’t do it in front of them. I thought that would be disrespectful to President Putin. You know, I wouldn’t do that, because they have not had the warmest relations. And actually, President Putin wouldn’t talk to the people from Europe. I mean, that was part of the problem.”
“‘So you stepped out of the Oval Office to make the call?” Hurt pressed.
“They had no communication with the White House for years. As people died, years with Biden and his people. No communication. Putin told me years. It was years that he didn’t speak to anybody from the White House. And it was a long time since he spoke to anyone from Europe,” Trump replied, staying on message and ignoring the question asked.
“No, it’s a fractured relationship. And when I came in, I always had, despite the ‘Russia, Russia, Russia’ hoax, which truly was a very dangerous thing for our country, but despite that. I maintained a very good relationship,” he prattled on. “I mean, you saw that when he got off his plane, I got off my plane. There’s a warmth there that you can’t, you know, there’s a decent feeling, and it’s a good thing, not a bad thing. People would say, ‘Oh, that’s such a terrible thing. It’s not a terrible thing. You know what? We’ve got the most nuclear weapons in the world and the most powerful. He’s got second, OK?”
“So can you describe for us how that happened?” Hurt pressed again. “Did you just announce that you were gonna go into the other room to make the phone call, and then you got up and left, and then came back?”
“I think they sort of knew I was at the end of the meeting. I was going to call President Putin, and President Putin expected it,” Trump explained. “And he was there now by the time I called him. It was one o’clock in the morning in Russia — Russia’s a big place, you know, they have 11 time zones, I believe 9 or 11, but I think it’s 11. That’s a lot of time zones — so it was late it was like one o’ clock in the morning, but he was he picked it up very happily sure he works very hard like we all do.”
Intentionally showing respect for a global leader like Putin, who many believe to be a war criminal due to the kidnapping of Ukrainian children and hundreds of thousands of deaths following his invasion of Ukraine is sure to be a partisan talking point, and only underlines the angst felt by many that came after seeing the US president warmly greet someone who many think to be America’s greatest enemy with applause and a red carpet during Friday’s summit in Alaska.
Watch above via Fox News
