- President Donald Trump will not say whether he confronted Russian President Vladimir Putin on reports that Russia paid rewards from Afghan militants for killing US troops.
- “We didn’t talk about what we discussed, but we had a lot of discussions,” Trump said Monday when asked if he discussed the matter with Putin during a recent phone call.
- But Trump has frequently offered the public details about various discussions he has had with world leaders, including his Russian counterpart.
- Last Thursday’s phone call marked Trump’s first discussion with Putin since reports of the alleged Russian reward plot emerged.
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President Donald Trump did not say Monday whether he confronted Russian President Vladimir Putin over reports that Russia paid rewards from Afghan Taliban-linked militants for killing US soldiers.
Trump and Putin spoke on the phone last Thursday for the first time since reports of the alleged Russian reward plot emerged.
During a visit to North Carolina on Monday, the president was asked if he mentioned reports of Russian rewards during the call.
“We didn’t talk about what we discussed, but we had a lot of discussion,” Trump said.
The president has routinely offered the public details about various discussions he has had with world leaders, including Putin.
And in a statement on the call, White House spokesman Judd Deere said last Thursday that the two world leaders “discussed efforts to defeat the coronavirus pandemic while world economies continue to reopen.”
—Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 27, 2020
Trump has dismissed reports of Russia’s alleged rewards plan as “false news,” despite the White House in early July saying the president was already “fully informed” on the matter. Previously, the administration said that Trump had never been informed of the information, although recent reports contradict this claim and suggest that he may have been informed as early as March 2019.
There is also an ongoing intelligence investigation into the matter, which focuses at least in part on a bombing that killed three U.S. Marines in April 2019, the New York Times reported in mid-July. The Times first revealed the story of the alleged Russian plot.
The Marines killed in the bombardment near Bagram Airfield, a major base in Afghanistan, were a sergeant. Christopher Slutman of Delaware, Cpl. Robert Hendriks of New York, and Sgt. Benjamin Hines of Pennsylvania.
The White House is not believed to have responded against Russia, and Trump did not bring up the matter in half a dozen phone calls with Putin that took place after February 27, when intelligence was said to have been included in the daily briefing of the President. . According to his comments Monday, it is also unclear whether Trump pulled the reports in last week’s phone call with the Russian leader.
Trump’s relationship with Putin has been a constant point of scrutiny during his tenure, as he is often perceived as a supporter of his incendiary Russian counterpart on a variety of issues, including Russia’s interference in the U.S. presidential election. 2016. Russia’s alleged rewards plan, and Trump’s seeming lack of concern about the reports, adds to his already controversial and unusual ties to Russia’s authoritarian leader.
