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President Donald Trump was tight-lipped after his high-stakes summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday but offered some key insight into the meeting to Fox News’ Sean Hannity in an exclusive interview.
Here are the key takeaways from Trump’s highly anticipated meeting with the Russian leader as shared with Hannity.
1. ‘No deal until there’s a deal’
Trump told Hannity that “as far as I’m concerned, there’s no deal until there’s a deal.” He noted, however, that “we did make a lot of progress.”
2. Putin ‘wants to see it done’
The president noted to Hannity that he believes Putin is not only open to peace but that he “wants to see it done.”
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3. Not prepared to share what the sticking point was
Pressed by Hannity to share what the “one big issue you don’t agree on” that kept the leaders from walking away with a ceasefire deal, Trump declined to share. He said, “No, I’d rather not. I guess somebody’s going to go public with it, they’ll figure it out, but no, I don’t want to do that, I want to see if we can get it done.”
4. Up to Zelenskyy and Europeh
After taking such a major step as to physically meet with the Russian president, Trump said it is now “up to [Ukrainian] President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy to get it done and maybe the European nations, they have to get involved a little bit.”
5. Trump open to trilateral meeting
The president said that he would be open to attending a trilateral meeting with the presidents of Ukraine and Russia, saying, “If they’d like, I’ll be at that meeting. They’re going to set up a meeting now between President Zelenskyy and President Putin and myself, I guess, not that I want to be there, but I want to get it done.”
He added, “I’ll be there.”
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6. Meeting a ‘10’
Trump said that he would rate the meeting a 10 out of 10, saying, “I think the meeting was a 10 in the sense that we got along great.”
7. Russia respects America now
Asked what he thought finally brought Putin to the negotiating table, Trump answered, “I don’t want to say anything brought him, he’s a very smart guy, nothing brought him to the table, so to speak.”
“I think he respects our country now, he didn’t respect it under Biden, I can tell you that, he had no respect for it.”
8. No war if Trump was in office
Trump also commented that he “was so happy” that Putin shared his belief during their joint press conference that the Russia-Ukraine war would have never happened had he been in office at the time.
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9. Advice to Zelenskyy
Without hesitating, Trump said that his advice to Zelenskyy after Friday’s meeting with Putin would be “make a deal.”
10. 2020 election rigged
Trump shared that Putin told him he believed the 2020 election was rigged because of the widespread mail-in voting, saying, “you can’t have a great democracy with mail-in voting.”
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