Trump adviser Bolton sees summit with Putin as necessary
BRIDGEWATER, N.J. — National security adviser John Bolton on Sunday defended President Donald Trump’s decision to hold a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki this month.
Appearing on Fox News Sunday, Bolton said the summit would be “somewhat unstructured,” especially during the leaders’ one-on-one time, to avoid “the pressure of immediate deadlines or crises.”
“He wants to understand the Russian position, but, more importantly, he wants Putin to understand our position,” Bolton said. “Let them discuss these issues and see exactly where there might be room for progress or where we find there is no room at all.”
Bolton said there was a need for a direct meeting with Putin, “especially given the Russian system where Putin essentially calls the shots.” He said the U.S. has wanted to learn about Russia’s main objectives, “but without this kind of discussion, which has been precluded for some time
by the political noise over the allegations of [Russian] collusion with the [presidential] campaign, we haven’t been able to do that.”
Bolton met with Putin last week in Moscow to lay the groundwork for the meeting with Trump.
“In my meeting with President Putin, he was very kind to go through the whole list of items on his agenda,” Bolton said. “I think there were some where it was clear our position was very, very far apart. There were others where perhaps there is room for some kind of progress.”
On CBS’ Face the Nation, Bolton said “the election meddling issue was definitely something we talked about,” adding that Putin told him that “there was no meddling in the 2016 election by the Russian state.”
“So I think it still raises the question,” Bolton said. “I think the president will have a conversation about this and say, ‘We don’t want to see meddling in the 2018 election.’”
Bolton, who before joining the White House said on television that Putin lied to Trump, said he hasn’t changed his mind about Russia’s involvement.
“It’s something we’re concerned about,” Bolton said. “That’s why the president is going to talk to him about it again.”
Trump said Sunday that he’s “going to mention” Russian meddling in U.S. elections during his July 16 meeting with Putin, and that the political fighting over the investigation into Russian interference is bad for the country.
“If Russia is in fact looking to sow discord or chaos, they’ve got to be saying, ‘This is the greatest thing we’ve ever done,’” Trump said in an interview on Fox News, discussing a contentious House Judiciary Committee hearing last week about the Russia probe.
Trump is scheduled to meet with Putin several days after he stops in Brussels for a NATO summit. The president has been critical of NATO, suggesting that other member nations do not contribute enough to the alliance and that the United States carries too much of the burden.
Bolton dismissed a question about whether Trump has been more willing to criticize NATO and other U.S. allies than authoritarian leaders of rival nations, including Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. Trump feuded with Group of Seven leaders during a summit in Canada last month over trade, abruptly dropping support for a routine joint statement. The president also suggested that Russia, which was kicked out of the group after it annexed Crimea in 2014, be invited back into the organization.
“I don’t read the way he conducted these meetings the same way,” Bolton told Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace. “I don’t think anybody ought to have a case of the vapors over discussions we have in NATO or the G-7 versus discussions we have with Putin or Kim Jong Un. They’re very, very different; the president treats them differently. He understands what the strategic interests are, and that’s what he’s trying to pursue.”
Although U.S. intelligence officials have stated unequivocally that Russian agents sought to influence the 2016
presidential election, Trump has continued to cast doubt on those conclusions. Last summer, during his first oneon-one meeting with Putin, in Hamburg, Germany, Trump said that he questioned Putin about the interference accusations and that the Russian leader denied it.
Last week, Trump suggested in a tweet that he believed Putin’s denials, noting that “Russia continues to say they had nothing to do with Meddling in our Election!”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday that he’s concerned when Trump tweets that Russia denies interfering in the U.S. elections. Trump should confront Putin with the “overwhelming” evidence, Graham said.
“The idea that Russia did not meddle in our election is fake news,” Graham said. “They did meddle in our election, and they’re doing it again in 2018.”
Information for this article was contributed by David Nakamura of The Washington Post; and by Christopher Condon, Craig Torres, Huang Zhe and Mark Niquette of Bloomberg News.