Donnie and Vlad

Trump had a second, secret conversation with Putin at the G20 meeting.

The hourlong conversation in Hamburg, Germany, took place at a private dinner among world leaders at a concert hall on the banks of the Elbe River during the Group of 20 economic summit meeting, with only a Kremlin interpreter present to listen to the exchange. It followed a formal meeting between the two presidents that lasted more than two hours earlier in the day, and included their foreign ministers for a fraught discussion about Moscow’s attempts to interfere in the 2016 American elections.

Only a Kremlin interpreter – so it’s like when Trump had the private meeting with Kislyak and Lavrov in the Oval Office…only more so, because this is Putin, and there was no one else there except the Kremlin interpreter.

This guy. I swear.

But the intimate dinner conversation, of which there is no official United States government record, because no American official other than the president was involved, is the latest to raise eyebrows. Foreign leaders who witnessed it later commented privately on the oddity of an American president flaunting such a close rapport with his Russian counterpart.

“Pretty much everyone at the dinner thought this was really weird, that here is the president of the United States, who clearly wants to display that he has a better relationship personally with President Putin than any of us, or simply doesn’t care,” said Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group, a New York-based research and consulting firm, who said he heard directly from attendees. “They were flummoxed, they were confused and they were startled.”

I wonder what he gave away. Did he tell Putin to help himself to the Baltics? Say the US really doesn’t care what he does to his own people? Offer him a few spare nukes?

In a statement, a White House official on Tuesday described the meeting as routine and brief, and explained the lack of an American translator by noting that the president was accompanied by a Japanese interpreter who did not speak Russian. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that any insinuation that the White House has tried to hide the encounter was false.

A second White House official confirmed that the meeting had occurred but did not offer any details, and insisted on anonymity because the discussion was private.

Private?? What do they mean private? He doesn’t get to go having “private” secret just-him meetings with Putin. They’re not lovers, they’re heads of rival states.

Russia specialists said such an encounter — even on an informal basis at a social event — raised red flags because of its length, which suggests a substantive exchange, and the fact that there was no American interpreter, note taker or national security or foreign policy aide present.

“We’re all going to be wondering what was said, and that’s where it’s unfortunate that there was no U.S. interpreter, because there is no independent American account of what happened,” Stephen Pifer, a former ambassador to Ukraine who also specializes Russia and nuclear arms control.

“If I was in the Kremlin, my recommendation to Putin would be, ‘See if you can get this guy alone,’ and that’s what it sounds like he was able to do,” added Mr. Pifer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

Because Trump is that stupid…or treasonous.

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