President Donald Trump has begun an expanded bilateral meeting with his staff and Russian President Vladimir Putin after a one-on-one meeting that lasted over two hours.
Trump’saccompanying staff includes U.S. Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Chief of Staff John Kelly, and National Security Advisor John Bolton, and NSC staffer Fiona Hill.
The summit is “off to a very good start,” Trump told reporters very briefly before they were ushered out of the room.
Trump first participated in an extended one-on-one meeting with Putin behind closed doors, accompanied only by his translator. “We have a lot of good things to talk about, and things to talk about. We have discussions on … trade to military to missiles to nuclear to China,” Trump said.
The president continued, “We have not been getting along very well for the last number of years … it’s getting close to two years, but I think we will have an extraordinary relationship. Getting along with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing.”
He added, “I really think the world wants to see us get along. We are the two great nuclear powers. We have 90 percent of the nuclear; that’s not a good thing, that’s a bad thing. And I think we hopefully can do something about that. Because it’s not a positive force, it’s a negative force.”