White House reporters covering President Donald Trump’s Alaska meeting Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin were left “wondering whether Trump was frustrated” as the president remained uncharacteristically silent throughout the event, one White House reporter said Saturday.
The summit, arranged to negotiate an end to the Russo-Ukraine War, included what was billed as a joint press conference with Trump and Putin, but according to The Hill reporter Brett Samuels, ended unusually.
“Trump only spoke for three minutes, offering few specifics about what, if anything, had been agreed upon at Friday’s summit,” Samuels wrote in a report published Saturday in The Hill.
“The abrupt ending to the press conference left many reporters wondering whether Trump was frustrated by the summit. The Hannity interview before departing Alaska only added to those questions.”
Trump had spoken with reporters on the seven-hour flight to Alaska, as is typical from the president who frequently engages in spats with the press, but things changed, Samuels wrote, once the plane reached its destination.
“The typically talkative Trump was apparently no longer interested in taking questions once he arrived in Alaska,” Samuels wrote. “He did not respond to questions shouted by this reporter and others during various photo ops with Putin, nor did he take any questions at what had been billed as a joint press conference with the Russian leader.”
Trump went on to ignore members of the press during the six-hour return flight to Washington, D.C., Samuels wrote, and instead opted to speak with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other European leaders.
“There were indications on the ground that Friday’s meeting did not go entirely as planned,” Samuels wrote.
The summit has left European leaders fearful that Trump’s “affinities with Russia and his admiration for Putin” may jeopardize Ukraine’s leverage in the peace talks, with Trump walking back of prior demands ahead of the summit, and failing to gain any hard concessions from Putin.
