Officials say Trump ignored their advice to take a firm stance with Putin

(Image credit: Yuri Kadobnov/AFP/Getty Images)

published 17 July 2018

Ahead of his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, President Donald Trump was urged by White House officials to be tough with Putin, but he chose to go a different route, several advisers and diplomats told The Washington Post.

Trump received more than 100 pages of briefing materials before the summit, going through a crash course on everything from the Russian annexation of Crimea to meddling in the 2016 presidential election, the Post reports. He was quick to let staffers know that he thought the U.S. "has been foolish" when it comes to Russia, and he spent his prep time "growling" over the indictment last week of 12 Russian intelligence officers accused of hacking into Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign emails.

Trump thought the announcement on Friday was intentionally done to hurt him going into the summit, several people told the Post, but one senior official said Trump was actually pleased, because this gave him an opportunity to privately discuss the matter with Putin. Trump had enjoyed his June summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un because "he thinks he can sit down eye to eye with these guys, flatter them and make a deal," and he was enthusiastic about his meeting with Putin. Behind the scenes, diplomats were racing from one European ally to the next, letting them know they didn't need to worry about Trump making any secret deals with Putin. It wasn't enough to soothe any of them, with one European official telling the Post, "These people don't control the reality." Read more about the days before the summit at The Washington Post.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.