Trump wants another meet with Putin, this time in US
WASHINGTON: US president Donald Trump has asked for another summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, this time in Washington DC, even as questions swirl about the one in Helsinki. The move caught even his intelligence chief unawares.
WASHINGTON:US president Donald Trump has asked for another summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, this time in Washington DC, even as questions swirl about the one they had in Helsinki.
The move caught even Trump’s intelligence chief unawares, who had said publicly he had no idea what happened at the one-on-one between the two leaders in Finland.
Trump tweeted on Thursday he was looking forward to a second meeting with Putin, but there was no indication how soon it would be. That came in a tweet from the White House press secretary Sarah Sanders. “President Trump asked @Ambjohnbolton (National Security Adviser John Bolton) to invite President Putin to Washington in the fall and those discussions are already underway.”
Asked about the invitation at a think-tank event, Daniel R Coats, Director of National Intelligence, said, making light of him being out of the loop: “Say that again? That’s going to be special.”
“If he had asked me how that ought to be conducted, I would have suggested a different way,” Coats said in response to a question how he would have advised the president if asked about the Helsinki summit. “But that’s not my role; that’s not my job. So, it is what it is.”
Coats is a former Republican senator who was picked by Trump to head the directorate of national intelligence, an apex body instituted in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks to unify intelligence sharing under one supervisory body.