Donald Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin held a second, previously undisclosed meeting during the G20 summit in Germany, the White House confirmed on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
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There was much media scrutiny of the leaders\u2019 formal bilateral talks on 7 July in which, the US president later said, Putin denied allegations that he led efforts to interfere in last year\u2019s US election.<\/p>\n
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Later that evening, Trump and Putin met again informally, a White House official acknowledged on Tuesday \u2013 but only after it was publicly revealed by Ian Bremmer, the president of the international consulting firm Eurasia Group.<\/p>\n
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Bremmer said there was a dinner that evening for the G20 heads of state and their spouses, though not all of them attended. \u201cThere were a lot of empty seats,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n
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\u201cDonald Trump got up from the table and sat down with Putin for about an hour. It was very animated and very friendly. Putin\u2019s translator was translating. I found out about it because people were startled.\u201d<\/p>\n
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There was no one else within earshot, Bremmer added, and it is not known what the men discussed. Trump was not joined in the conversation by his own translator, which is thought to be a breach of national security protocol.<\/p>\n
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The White House later said that the translator who accompanied Trump spoke Japanese, not Russian, and that was why Trump and Putin spoke through the Russian translator.<\/p>\n
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Bremmer added: \u201cIt\u2019s very clear that Trump\u2019s best single relationship in the G20 is with Putin. US allies were surprised, flummoxed, disheartened. You\u2019ve got Trump in the room with all these allies and who\u2019s the one he spends time with?\u201d<\/p>\n
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Such was the level of concern that someone decided to bring it to Bremmer\u2019s attention. He said he had expected the White House to go public. \u201cI sat on this for days hoping they would talk about it. I knew last week. It didn\u2019t happen. I\u2019m an analyst; I\u2019m not in the business of breaking news,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
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There is no official government record of the meeting and it was not previously disclosed by the White House, which is facing investigations into the Trump campaign\u2019s Russia ties by the special counsel Robert Mueller and two congressional committees.<\/p>\n
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\u201cDuring the course of the dinner, all the leaders circulated throughout the room and spoke with one another freely,\u201d a senior administration official said in a statement Tuesday night, adding: \u201cThere was no \u2018second meeting\u2019 between President Trump and President Putin, just a brief conversation at the end of a dinner. The insinuation that the White House has tried to \u2018hide\u2019 a second meeting is false, malicious and absurd. It is not merely perfectly normal, it is part of a president\u2019s duties, to interact with world leaders.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Also on Tuesday night, the president tweeted to say the news coverage of the \u201csecret dinner with Putin is \u2018sick\u2019\u201d, insisting twice that the press was aware of the dinner. While it is true that the dinner was well known and covered by the news media, the press at large did not know about the private conversation between Putin and Trump.<\/p>\n
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Trump\u2019s presidency has been overshadowed by allegations that his election campaign colluded with Russia. Last week it emerged that his son, Donald Trump Jr, held a meeting with a Russian lawyer and Russian American political operative with a view to receiving allegedly incriminating information about Hillary Clinton from the Russian government. Trump Jr claims it led nowhere and denies wrongdoing.<\/p>\n
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Trump has consistently and mysteriously refused to criticise the Russian leader. Bremmer said: \u201cI\u2019ve never in my life seen a relationship between two major countries where the interests are so misaligned while the leaders are so buddy-buddy. It doesn\u2019t add up.<\/p>\n
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\u201cTrump has been inconsistent on his China policy, he\u2019s been inconsistent on his Nato policy. On any foreign policy issue he\u2019s been on both sides. Except Russia. It doesn\u2019t make sense. The fact he was willing to do this in front of global leaders shows he just doesn\u2019t care how America is perc<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Donald Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin held a second, previously undisclosed meeting during the G20 summit in Germany, the White House confirmed on Tuesday. There was much media scrutiny of the leaders’ formal bilateral talks on 7 July in which, the US president later said, Putin denied allegations that he led efforts to interfere in last year’s US election. Later that evening, Trump and Putin met again informally, a White House official acknowledged on Tuesday – but only after it was publicly revealed by Ian Bremmer, the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":8509,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[30,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8508"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8508"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8508\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8510,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8508\/revisions\/8510"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}