Foreign Affairs

Eugene

(61,872 posts) Thu May 23, 2019, 01:45 PM May 2019

Putin out-prepared Trump in key meeting, Rex Tillerson told House panel

Source: Washington Post

Putin out-prepared Trump in key meeting, Rex Tillerson told House panel

By John Hudson and Josh Dawsey May 22 at 9:39 PM

Former secretary of state Rex Tillerson told members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee that Russian President Vladimir Putin out-prepared President Trump during a key meeting in Germany, putting the U.S. leader at a disadvantage during their first series of tête-à-têtes.

The U.S. side anticipated a shorter meeting for exchanging courtesies, but it ballooned into a globe-spanning two-hour-plus session involving deliberations on a variety of geopolitical issues, said committee aides, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss Tillerson’s seven-hour closed meeting with the committee.

“We spent a lot of time in the conversation talking about how Putin seized every opportunity to push what he wanted,” a committee aide said. “There was a discrepancy in preparation, and it created an unequal footing.”

Tillerson, whose public remarks about the president have been sparse since his dramatic firing in March 2018, spoke to a bipartisan group of lawmakers and staffers Tuesday at the request of the chairman of the committee, Rep. Eliot L. Engel (D-N.Y.).

In response to Tillerson’s remarks, Trump countered his former Cabinet secretary, saying in a statement that he “was perfectly prepared for my meetings with Vladimir Putin. We did very well at those meetings.”

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