The lack of an official record for one of President Trump's foreign policy meetings apparently created a whole lot of confusion among those in the administration.
The Washington Post reports that after Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki in 2018, Bolton told administration officials that during the "no-notes" meeting, the president had "insisted that U.S. troops would stay in Syria until Moscow forced out its Iranian allies." So officials at the Pentagon and the State Department began to work out a strategy with this as the goal since they had "no reason to doubt Bolton's account."
But according to this report, Trump "never approved a strategy tying troop withdrawal to Iran's departure," and his own foreign policy team was surprised months later to see him tweet that U.S. troops would be withdrawn from Syria.
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Because no notes were taken at this meeting with Putin, the Post writes that what Trump actually said is still a mystery.
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