'Sick:' Trump slams reports of 'second meeting' with Putin at G-20
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President Trump lashed out at reports that he and Russian President Vladimir Putin had a second, previously undisclosed talk during the G-20 summit in Germany earlier this month.
The president said the dinner at which the encounter took place was known to members of the media who were covering the event.
In a follow-up tweet, Trump decried the media for, as he put it, "becoming more and more dishonest!"
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"Even a dinner arranged for top 20 leaders in Germany is made to look sinister," the president wrote.
A White House spokesman confirmed the conversation between the American and Russian leaders to Fox News earlier Tuesday.
An administration official said Trump and Putin “briefly” spoke during a dinner the night of the G-20 summit.
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First lady Melania Trump was seated next to Putin, and the president approached Putin at the end of the night, the official said. They spoke through a Russian translator.
The administration official pushed back against the interaction being characterized as a “meeting.”
“There was no ‘second meeting’ between President Trump and President Putin, just a brief conversation at the end of a dinner,” the official said. “The insinuation that the White House has tried to ‘hide’ a second meeting is false, malicious and absurd.”
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The official added: “It is not merely perfectly normal, it is part of a president's duties, to interact with world leaders.”
Details about what transpired during the conversation were unclear.
Their first G-20 encounter, on July 7, lasted more than two hours. Trump later said he pressed the Russian president during that meeting about whether his government attempted to meddle in the 2016 presidential election.
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Meanwhile, the White House on Tuesday night officially announced the president’s appointment of former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman to serve as ambassador to Russia. Huntsman is a former ambassador to China and Singapore who unsuccessfully ran for president as a Republican in 2012.
Fox News’ Serafin Gomez and The Associated Press contributed to this report.