Posted on 07/18/17
| News Source: The Hill
President Trump held a second, informal talk with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the Group of 20 (G-20) summit in Hamburg, Germany, earlier this month, the White House confirmed Tuesday.
Press secretly Sean Spicer confirmed Trump and Putin spoke at the G-20 heads of state dinner, hours after their formal bilateral sit-down. But he wasn't able to say how long they spoke or what they discussed.
According to Tuesday reports, in their second conversation, Trump spoke with the Russian leader for roughly an hour, joined only by Putin's translator. The meeting had previously gone without mention by the administration.
Trump's interactions with Putin are the subject of particularly intense scrutiny in the U.S., because of the ongoing special counsel and congressional investigations into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow.
That Trump was not joined in the conversation by his own translator is a breach of national security protocol, according to Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group, though one that the president likely would not know about.
Trump and Putin met for a formal discussion during the G-20 summit — a meeting that was scheduled to last 30 minutes but exceeded two hours.
Bremmer said in an interview with Bloomberg's Charlie Rose that the rapport that Trump established with Putin during the summit is "clearly his best personal relationship" with a G-20 leader.
"Never in my life as a political scientist have I seen two countries — major countries — with a constellation of national interests that are as dissonant, while the two leaders seem to be doing everything possible to make nice and be close to each other," he said.
During the formal meeting, Trump reportedly pressed Putin about Moscow's efforts to meddle in the 2016 election, which the Russian president denied.