Russian President Vladimir Putin had to “keep explaining things” to Donald Trump while he was U.S. President.
Former White House aide Fiona Hill told the Chicago Council on Global Affairs that Trump had to have things explained to him over and over again.
“Putin doesn’t like to do that,” Hill explained, saying that you could see how frustrated Putin would get with Trump. She said that Putin wants to have predictability in the person he engages with.
Trump has loudly boasted that Putin would not have invaded Ukraine if he was still in power, trying to show that he had some form of control over the Russian President, or at least some sort of camaraderie.
Hill paints a very different picture.
Trump was seen as being too close to Putin. One highlight included a Helsinki summit in July 2018, when the two leaders met alone except for translators. Trump said he believed Putin over his own intelligence services regarding the election interference.
Trump and his administration was dogged by investigations of Russian election interference in the U.S., and links between Trump and Moscow.
On how Putin views Trump, Hill previously said that Trump wants to sit down with the other individual and “ create personal chemistry” and then let everyone else actually work out the details. She said that Trump wanted to treat Putin like he treated China’s Xi Jingping, and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, and just be able to pick up the phone and chat with them.
But Putin doesn’t operate like that, Hill said, and takes translators with him for everything. Hill said the Russians are very organized, and that they take advantage of every opportunity, vulnerability, and open door.
British-born Hill was senior director for European and Russian affairs on Trump’s national security council. Now, she is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. She came to prominence when she testified in Trump’s first impeachment hearing for withholding military aid to Ukraine in an attempt to extract political dirt on opponents, including now-president Joe Biden.
Hill was co-author of a very well-received book about Putin called There Is Nothing For You Here.
Be the first to comment