Putin and Trump Meet Privately, Hold Joint Press Conference

U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin met Monday in Helsinki Finland. Their meeting, attended only by the two leaders and their translators, lasted more than 2 hours.

After their meeting the two held a joint press conference. CNN’s film of the entire press conference can be seen here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwxqOoIyWm0
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The transcript of their remarks can be found here.
https://www.npr.org/2018/07/16/629462401/transcript-president-trump-and-russian-president-putins-joint-press-conference

An unusual exchange took place between Associated Press reporter Jonathan Lemire and Putin. Lemire asked a set of questions:

“Two questions for you, sir. Can you tell me what President Trump may have indicated to you about officially recognizing Crimea as part of Russia? And then secondly, sir, do you, does the Russian government have any compromising material on President Trump or his family?”

Putin did not directly answer the second question.

(chuckles) “The posture of President Trump on Crimea is well known and he stands firmly by it, he continues to maintain that it was illegal to annex it. We - our viewpoint is different. We held a referendum in strict compliance with the UN Charter and international legislation.
“For us, this issue, we put unintelligible to this issue.
“And now to the compromising material.
“Yeah, I did heard these rumors that we allegedly collected compromising material on Mr. Trump when he was visiting Moscow.
“Our distinguished colleague, let me tell you this.
“When President Trump visited Moscow back then I didn't even know that he was in Moscow. I treat President Trump with utmost respect. But back then, when he was a private individual, a businessman, nobody informed me that he was in Moscow.
“But let's take St. Petersburg economic forum, for instance. There were over 500 American businessmen - the high ranking, the high level ones, I don't even remember the last names of each and every one of them.
“Do you think that we tried to collect compromising material on each and every single one of them? Well, it's difficult to imagine an utter nonsense of a bigger scale than this.
“Well, please just disregard these issues and don't think about this anymore again.”

President Trump immediately added:

“And I have to say if they had it, it would have been out long ago and if anybody watched Peter Strzok testify over the last couple of days and I was in Brussels watching it, it was a disgrace to the FBI, it was a disgrace to our country. And you would say that was a total witch hunt. Thank you very much everybody. Thank you.”

 When Trump visited Moscow with the Miss Universe Pageant in December 2013, he was visited by Dmitri Peskov, Kremlin press secretary, who explained that Putin was unable to come. The Washington Post, in June of 2016, reported that Trump associate Aras Agalarov said in an interview that Trump received a gift from Putin before he left Moscow:

"Putin canceled at the last minute, but he sent a decorative lacquered box, a traditional Russian gift, and a warm note, according to Aras Agalarov."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/inside-trumps-financial-ties-to-russia-and-his-unusual-flattery-of-vladimir-putin/2016/06/17/dbdcaac8-31a6-11e6-8ff7-7b6c1998b7a0_story.html?utm_term=.b2fc6f182f51
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http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2018/jul/16/vladimir-putin-didnt-know-trump-was-moscow-2013/
 
 
 

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