Donald Trump Goes On Russian State TV To Praise President Vladimir Putin, ‘He’s A Great Guy, Terrific Person’
At the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan, on Saturday, Donald Trump granted an interview to the Russian government-owned television network Rossiya 24, and delivered statements to the Russian audience that will likely be familiar to U.S. viewers as well, according to a report by Raw Story.
Rossiya 24 was created in 2006 by the All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, Russia’s government broadcasting authority, as a new “independent information channel,” according to the popular Russia online news site Lenta.ru.
Trump’s impromptu interview with the Russian government-run media outlet was reported by Julia Davis, an independent journalist who monitors Russian state television and media, cataloguing its reports and commentary on U.S. political issues.
According to Davis, reporting via her Twitter account, Trump described Putin to the Russian media outlet as “a terrific person.”
A YouTube post of the interview features Trump talking to a Rossiya 24 reporter.
“How did you like your meeting [with Putin],” the interviewer asks.
Trump replied that the Russian president is “a great guy,” and “a terrific person.” Trump went on to say, “we accomplished a lot.”
“We actually started to talk about trade,” Trump continued. “We should have trade between Russia and the United States.”
Statistics show that Russia is currently the 28th largest trading partner with the U.S.
Trump engages with #Russia's state TV, gives a brief interview to the same television station that routinely mocks him (Rossiya 24), repeatedly says that Putin "is a terrific person" and insists that Russia and the U.S. should do more trading. pic.twitter.com/IdWPmG1fg9
— Julia Davis (@JuliaDavisNews) June 29, 2019
According to the USA Trade Numbers data site, the United States ran a $4.22 billion trade deficit with Russia in the first four months of 2019. U.S. trade with Russia is on the upswing, at least somewhat. During the same period in 2018, Russia was the 29th largest trading partner with the U.S.
Speaking to reporters at the G20 summit following his meeting with Putin, Trump again appeared to endorse Putin’s denials that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election, as The Inquisitr has reported in the past. Both the U.S. intelligence community and special counsel Robert Mueller have found that Russia interfered in the election.
In his report, readable online via The New York Times, Mueller said that Russia’s campaign to tamper with the 2016 election was carried out in “sweeping and systematic” fashion.
The U.S. intelligence assessment concluded that Putin himself ordered the election tampering operation, which was designed to help Trump win the presidency — a finding that was also reported by independent Russian journalists, who pinpointed Putin’s order to a single meeting between Putin and his top advisers in April of 2015, according to an Atlantic Monthly report.
But Trump told reporters that Putin denied that Russian interfered in the election in their G20 meeting.
“You know he denies it totally. I mean, how many times can you get somebody to deny something?” Trump said, as quoted by Politico reporter Carla Marinucci via Twitter.
