Trump to invite Putin to USA for talks in autumn
US President Donald Trump has asked his national security adviser to invite Vladimir Putin to Washington in the autumn.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said John Bolton would be making the invitation following Mr Trump’s meeting with the Russian president earlier this week in Finland.
Ms Sanders said “those discussions are already under way” for an autumn meeting between the two presidents.
It presumably would take place at the White House but Ms Sanders did not say where the pair would meet.
In a tweet about Mr Putin earlier yesterday, Mr Trump said, “I look forward to our second meeting.”
Mr Trump said he wants another meeting with Mr Putin to start implementing ideas they discussed in Helsinki.
He said that summit was a starting point for progress on a number of shared concerns.
Mr Trump accused the news media of trying to provoke a confrontation with Moscow that could lead to war, although concerns about the meeting have been raised by - Republicans and Democrats. Mr Trump tweeted a list of topics discussed at the summit, including terrorism, security for Israel, Middle East peace, Ukraine, North Korea and more, and wrote: “There are many answers, some easy and some hard, to these problems... but they can all be solved!”
He added: “I look forward to our second meeting so that we can start implementing some of the many things discussed.”
Mr Trump also met with Mr Putin last year in Germany and Vietnam.
Despite bipartisan criticism, Mr Trump pointed blame at the media, tweeting: “The Fake News Media wants so badly to see a major confrontation with Russia, even a confrontation that could lead to war. They are pushing so recklessly hard and hate the fact that I’ll probably have a good relationship with Putin.”
“The Summit with Russia was a great success, except with the real enemy of the people, the Fake News Media,” he tweeted.
Numerous politicians have criticised Mr Trump for his post-summit statements raising doubts about Russia’s interference in the 2016 US elections, and past and current intelligence community officials also differed with many of his statements.
Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican, acknowledged that Mr Trump has had a “bad week” on Russia. “I think it’s imperative that he understand that he’s misjudging Putin,” Mr Graham told reporters. I don’t think he was prepared as well as he should have been.”
Mr Graham said Mr Trump was right to criticise previous administrations for their handling of Russia. But he said Mr Trump “is not making the problem better, he’s making it worse”.
Yesterday marked the third day of Mr Trump trying to manage the political fallout from his widely criticised performance at the summit meeting with Mr Putin in Finland.
Mr Putin, in his first public comments about the summit, told Russian diplomats that US-Russian relations are “in some ways worse than during the Cold War”, but that the meeting with Mr Trump allowed them to start on “the path to positive change”.