Sean Hannity Gets Trump to Admit He Might Not Have Been the One Who ‘Walked Away’ From Summit

Fox News host Sean Hannity asked the most revealing question of Donald Trump‘s Hanoi press conference when he (perhaps inadvertently) got Trump to admit that walking away from the summit may not have been the United States’ decision.

On Thursday, Trump held a press conference to announce that his summit with Kim Jong Un had ended early, without a deal. During the opening minutes of that press conference, Trump repeatedly told reporters variations of the idea that “we had to walk away” and “we decided that we had to walk” from the negotiations.

The clear implication was that Trump ended the talks in a show of strength, an implication that was not lost on Hannity. The Fox host sought to cast Trump’s move in that light by comparing it to Ronald Reagan‘s decision to walk away from a 1986 summit with then-Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev.

“Mr. President, if you could elaborate a little bit more, we have some history,” Hannity said. “President Reagan walked away, a lot of condemnation at the time, and it ended up working out very well in the end for the United States. Was this mostly your decision, and what message would you want to send chairman Kim as he’s listening to this press conference about the future and your relationship?”

“Well, Sean, I don’t want to say it was my decision, because what purpose is that?” Trump replied. “I want to keep the relationship, and we will keep the relationship. We’ll see what happens over the next period of time.”

From that point on in the press conference, Trump talked about “everyone” walking away, and that “it was a very friendly walk.”

Trump’s explanation, that he’s trying to preserve the negotiating relationship by not claiming he was the one to walk away, is belied by the four times he claimed exactly that before Hannity asked him directly if it was his decision to walk away.

It is possible, then, that they all decided simultaneously to walk like some sort of “meet-cute” in a nuclear diplomacy rom-com, or that Trump passed up a chance to compare himself with Reagan in order to contradict something he’d already said multiple times, or that it was Kim who pulled a move on Trump. Hannity reports, you decide.

Watch the clip above, from The White House.

[Image via screengrab]

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