World leaders who had gathered for a G20 summit meeting were reportedly astonished when they saw President Donald Trump leave his seat during a dinner for the leaders and their spouses to speak one-on-one with Russian President Vladimir Putin for about an hour.
The two leaders had met earlier during the day during a much-talked-about face-to-face. During that time, Trump said afterward, the American president pressed Putin on whether or not he was involved in interfering with the 2016 presidential election, but it seemed that the two of them hit it off well. This, apparently, led Trump to get up during the dinner and speak privately during the dinner with Putin, according to The New York Times.
However, press was not at the dinner, and the second meeting between the two presidents was only confirmed on Tuesday by the White House after other guests at the dinner had remarked privately on it.
“Pretty much everyone at the dinner thought this was really weird, that here is the president of the United States, who clearly wants to display that he has a better relationship personally with President Putin than any of us, or simply doesn’t care,” said Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group, who claimed to have spoken directly with guests about the incident. “They were flummoxed, they were confused and they were startled.”
There is no record of what was said, because the only people involved in the conversation were Putin, Trump, and a Kremlin translator. Because the American translator did not speak Russian, the Kremlin translator was the only one involved, making Trump the only American official in the conversation. There was no note-taker or foreign policy official.
“We have the worst relationship as a country right now with Russia that we have in decades, and yet we have these two leaders that, for reasons that do not make sense and have not been explained to anyone’s satisfaction, are hellbent on adoring each other,” Bremmer said. “You can take everything that’s been given to us, and it doesn’t add up.”
Trump, meanwhile, has criticized news reports of the meeting as “sick.”
“Even a dinner arranged for top 20 leaders in Germany is made to look sinister!” Trump tweeted.
Despite reports that the meeting lasted for about an hour, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer insisted that it was purely a social visit and that the conversation consisted of “pleasantries and small talk.”