Trump says he spoke with Putin about 'adoptions' during second, undisclosed meeting at G-20 Summit
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Trump says he spoke with Putin about 'adoptions' during second, undisclosed meeting at G-20 Summit
by Josh Siegel | Jul 19, 2017, 9:09 PM Share on Twitter Share on Facebook Email this article Share on LinkedIn
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President Trump on Wednesday downplayed his second, undisclosed meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying they spoke for about 15 minutes, mostly about "pleasantries."
In an interview with the New York Times, Trump also acknowledged he spoke with Putin "about adoptions."
"The meal was going toward dessert,'' Trump said. "I went down just to say hello to Melania, and while I was there I said hello to Putin. Really, pleasantries more than anything else. It was not a long conversation, but it was, you know, could be 15 minutes. Just talked about things. Actually, it was very interesting, we talked about adoption."
Putin banned American adoptions of Russian children in 2012 after the U.S. enacted sanctions on Russians accused of human rights abuses.
Donald Trump Jr., the president's eldest son, has said the adoption issue dominated his June 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer who promised damaging information on Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee for president.
Trump told the Times it was "interesting" that the topic of adoptions came up in the Putin conversation.
"I actually talked about Russian adoption with him [Putin],'' he said, "Which is interesting because it was a part of the conversation that Don had in that meeting."
Multiple news outlets reported Tuesday that Trump and Putin spoke in July at the end of a couples dinner in the main room of the G-20 summit, where dinner was held following their two-hour bilateral meeting earlier that day.
The White House did not previously disclose the second interaction and has not detailed what Trump and Putin discussed since the story broke.
There is no official account of the conversation, because only Trump, Putin, and a Russian translator participated in it.
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