The morning after news broke of President Trump’s second, secret meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin during a dinner at the G-20 Summit in Germany, Trump’s former campaign manager had a creative approach to dismissing the controversy.
Appearing on Trump’s favorite TV show, Corey Lewandowski, who remains close to Trump, suggested the only reason Trump and Putin ended up having a second meeting is because Trump was drawn to the “stunningly beautiful and incredibly intelligent” First Lady Melania Trump, who happened to be seated next to Putin at the dinner.
“Our best representative — who is stunningly beautiful and incredibly intelligent — sat next to Vladimir Putin at the request of the German Chancellor,” Lewandowski said during a Fox & Friends interview. “She had a conversation with Vladimir Putin, it was her dinner partner for a few hours, big deal.”
“And then you know what the president did? Our president. He got up, and he walked over, and he sought his beautiful wife, the First Lady of the United States, and he had a conversation with her,” he continued. “How is this anything other than the President of the United States going over and seeing the First Lady? Who by the way, speaks five languages, is incredibly beautiful, and is incredibly intelligent, and is a great representative of our country.”
.@CLewandowski_ slams reports of secret meeting between POTUS & Putin: How is this anything other than him going over to see FLOTUS? pic.twitter.com/3Iecdsabz9
— FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) July 19, 2017
Lewandowski’s comments echo a White House statement about the meeting that claims Trump “spoke briefly with President Putin” during the dinner.
“There was no ‘second meeting’ between President Trump and President Putin, just a brief conversation at the end of a dinner,” the statement adds. “The insinuation that the White House has tried to ‘hide’ a second meeting is false, malicious and absurd.”
But a senior White House official told CNN that the dinner conversation between Trump and Putin lasted “nearly an hour.” Similarly, Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group, told the New York Times that eyewitnesses he spoke with described the meeting as lasting roughly that same length of time.
“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,” Bremmer said. “They were flummoxed, they were confused and they were startled.”
There is also the issue of Trump having an extended, private conversation with Putin amid controversy surrounding Russia’s interference in the presidential election on his behalf — interference Trump continues to dismiss as a “hoax.”
On Tuesday, the Russian government issued its latest threat of “retaliation measures” if two espionage-linked compounds on American soil that the Obama administration seized in response to Russia’s interference aren’t swiftly and unconditionally returned. Did the compounds come up during Trump and Putin’s dinner conversation? Only those two and Putin’s translator know.
The president is the latest in a long succession of Trump associates to meet with Russian officials and not publicly disclose it until media reports forced them to do so. Other entries on that list include Donald Trump Jr., White House adviser Jared Kushner, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.