President Donald Trump invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to Washington, D.C., for a meeting via his national security advisor John Bolton, as White House press secretary Sarah Sanders announced on Twitter Thursday.
In Helsinki, @POTUS agreed to ongoing working level dialogue between the two security council staffs. President Trump asked @Ambjohnbolton to invite President Putin to Washington in the fall and those discussions are already underway.
— Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) July 19, 2018
The visit will mark Putin’s first to D.C. since November of 2001. Trump hinted he would do so in a Thursday morning tweet, saying:
The Summit with Russia was a great success, except with the real enemy of the people, the Fake News Media. I look forward to our second meeting so that we can start implementing some of the many things discussed, including stopping terrorism, security for Israel, nuclear……..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 19, 2018
….proliferation, cyber attacks, trade, Ukraine, Middle East peace, North Korea and more. There are many answers, some easy and some hard, to these problems…but they can ALL be solved!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 19, 2018
Trump spent much of Thursday morning fuming about the coverage of his Monday summit with Putin during which he ignited a media firestorm after his press conference during which he appeared to give some credence to the Russian president’s claim that he did not interfere in the 2016 presidential election, despite being told the opposite by his intelligence community leaders.