President Donald Trump has now invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to the visit the White House this fall.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders tweeted the announcement on Thursday, saying that national security adviser John Bolton had made the invitation to Putin and that “discussions are already underway.”
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
Shortly after Sanders tweeted the news, Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats was on stage at the Aspen Security Forum being interviewed by NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, who broke the news to him.
“Say that again,” he said. “Did I hear you?” She repeated the announcement. “Okaaaay,” Coats said. “That’s going to be special.”
The Director of National Intelligence didn’t have any advance warning that an invitation to visit had been extended to the President of a hostile foreign nation, which is interesting with all that’s going on with Russia currently.
Scott Dworkin with the Democratic Coalition says:
I don’t know what’s more insane. The fact you just invited Putin to the White House, or the fact you think you’ll still be president by the fall. Make it easy on everyone and just resign in disgrace now. Instead of resigning in disgrace later or being impeached.”
.@realDonaldTrump-I don’t know what’s more insane. The fact you just invited Putin to the White House, or the fact you think you’ll still be president by the fall. Make it easy on everyone and just resign in disgrace now. Instead of resigning in disgrace later or being impeached.
— Scott Dworkin (@funder) July 19, 2018
It’s unclear at this point what exactly will be the nature of Putin’s visit, but we can probably assume that there will be closed-door meeting(s), which will certainly cause an even bigger media frenzy than there already is.
Featured image via screen capture
