Incoming White House press secretary Sean Spicer denied on Sunday reports that President-elect Donald Trump’s first foreign trip will be a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“100% false,” Spicer tweeted.
not true – report is 100% false #facts https://t.co/nDSqknFD3R
— Sean Spicer (@seanspicer) January 15, 2017
Nope, not true https://t.co/bkEqDiD7qV
— Sean Spicer (@seanspicer) January 15, 2017
Spicer tweeted links to stories by The Hill and Bloomberg News (since updated), both of which cited a report by the Sunday Times that Trump planned to hold a summit with Putin in Iceland within weeks of taking office.
According to the report, Trump and his team told British officials that the meeting would be his first foreign trip as president.
An advisor to Trump said that he planned to meet with Putin “very soon” and that Reykjavik was under “active consideration” for the site of such a summit, as quoted by the Sunday Times.
“What does Putin want?” the advisor said, as quoted in the report. “Prestige — centre stage at the summit, the one-on-one meeting, the hand on the back from Trump. That gives the US tremendous leverage. Mr Trump is master of the photo op and he will use that skill.”
Icelandic Foreign Minister Guðlaugur Þór Þórðarsson told the Iceland Monitor that the Icelandic government had not received a query regarding the matter.
“The Icelandic government has not received a query with regards to this,” he wrote. “If officials in Washington DC make a formal request for the Icelandic government to organise a summit in Reykjavik we will look at it positively and make this our input to improve relations between the US and Russia, remember the summit at Höfði house in 1986.”
In 1986, President Ronald Reagan held a summit meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik.
