Donald Trump said Wednesday that he has never actually met Russian President Vladimir Putin despite bragging multiple times recently about conversations he has had with him.
“He said one nice thing about me. He said I’m a genius. I said thank you very much to the newspaper and that was the end of it. I never met Putin,” Trump said.
Trump, who has complimented Putin before, said that he would treat the dictator “firmly” but have their two countries be “friendly.”
On the GOP debate stage in November, though, Trump bragged about meeting the Russian leader.
“I got to know him very well because we were both on ’60 Minutes,’ we were stablemates, and we did very well that night,” Trump said.
Time reported that for that edition of “60 Minutes,” Trump was interviewed in the United States by CBS host Charlie Rose, who then traveled to Russia to interview Putin. The two appeared on the same segment of the long-running docu-series.
Trump also said during a National Press Club luncheon in 2014 that he was in Moscow and he spoke “directly and indirectly with President Putin who could not have been nicer.”
Trump: We were together that day, on TV Screen.
Bill O’Reilly: I can vouch for it, I saw a picture of Trump and Putin together.
Vladimir Trump seems to be having trouble keeping up with his own lies. No matter. Once he gets into office, he’ll be seeing Putin once a week to get his marching orders.
That’s just one of the many lies they are going to be admitting or hiding over the course of the next few weeks regarding Russia.
The much bigger one, that they have already dug their hole on, is the claim that he does no business in Russia. Its such a patently transparent dodge that draws immediate attention to his son bragging about their portfolio taking in huge amounts of Russian money. Bloomberg already has a piece out documenting how actively Trump has been seeking to do business IN Russia. And, then there is the selling of the beauty pageant to Russia.
They will be forced to defend and spin all of that in the coming days, which means…Defensive Posture whiling bleeding into the water.
TPM:
Donald, if you’re denying: you’re losing.
He seems nice. He has big hands. Everybody says so.