How Melania privately swayed Trump to strike a new hardline position on Putin
Trump, who has taken a harsher tone with the Russian president of late, said it's Melania who points out that, after he talks with Putin about a peace deal, Russia continues to bomb Ukraine.
The president was asked about Putin during an Oval Office sitdown with NATO Secretary General Mark Butte.
Trump explained he speaks to the Russian leader often, but gave out surprising information about who points out Putin's contradictions.
'My conversations with him are always very pleasant. I say, isn't that very lovely conversation? And then the missiles go off that night, I go home, I tell the first lady... I spoke with Vladimir today, we had a wonderful conversation. She [says]: "Oh, really, another city was just hit,"' Trump said.
Melania Trump has not been a visible presence around the White House in Trump's second term, spending the majority of her time in New York, where their son Barron goes to New York University.
But she and the president are known to speak on the phone often. And Trump is said to value the opinion of his wife of 20 years.
And the first lady has experience with communist rule.
Melania Trump was born in then-Yugoslavia, which was a country under communist control. She lived in a communist-style apartment. Yugoslavia was divided in the 1980s and Melania lived in the Slovenia portion.
Her family lived well but she denied her father, Viktor Knavs, was a communist.
In her memoir Melania, she attacked descriptions of her father as a communist saying it was 'not reflective of his political beliefs' and party membership was 'mandatory.'
'His Communist Party affiliation was a mandatory induction, as the party had implemented an automatic monthly disbursement of a portion of his salary,' she claimed.
'Growing up, I felt more connected to our neighbors in Italy or Austria than to other communist countries in Eastern Europe,' she went on.
She recalled going to an Elton John concert at age 14 and later on, one with Tina Turner. She attended Formula 1 races with her father.
With her older sister Ines, she traveled to Venice.
She skied the Alps and took summer trips to the Dalmatian coast of Croatia.
'Despite living in a region that was often seen as separate from the rest of the world, we were fortunate to have the opportunity to travel and explore different cultures,' she wrote.
Her country transitioned from communism in 1990 as the communist bloc fell across Eastern Europe. Melania Trump moved to New York in 1996 to pursue modeling and, there, she met Trump.
Melania Trump also has met Putin. She joined President Trump in July 2018 - in his first term - at a summit with the Russian leader in Helsinki.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has dismissed President Donald Trump's calls for a ceasefire in Ukraine
The president, meanwhile, is demanding Putin come to the table to discuss a ceasefire with Ukraine.
He threatened to slap 100 percent tariffs on Russia in 50 days if a deal to end the war isn't reached.
'We are very, very unhappy with [Russia], and we're going to be doing very severe tariffs if we don't have a deal in 50 days, tariffs at about 100 percent,' he said in the Oval Office.
'I'm disappointed in President Putin. I thought we would've had a deal two months ago,' he went on about the proposed peace deal.
Putin has ignored Trump's call for a ceasefire and ratcheted up his attacks on Ukraine, sending more than 500 drones and missiles almost daily. Trump, for weeks, has been showing his frustration with the Russian leader's refusal to stand down and come to peace talks.
Additionally, Trump confirmed that he's sending American weapons to Ukraine and that the U.S. will not be paying for them.
He made a deal with NATO to send sophisticated weaponry, including Patriot missiles, to Ukraine.
He insisted that the U.S. will not be footing the bill after being taken advantage of for so long.
'We've made a deal today where we are going to be sending [Ukraine] weapons and [Europe] is going to be paying for them,' he stated.
'We - the United States - will not be having any payment made. We're not buying it, but we will manufacture it, and they're going to be paying for it.'
The president is angry at Russia and ready to arm Ukraine, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a close Trump ally, said.
'In the coming days, you´ll see weapons flowing at a record level to help Ukraine defend themselves,' Graham said Sunday on CBS' Face the Nation.
'One of the biggest miscalculations Putin has made is to play Trump. And you just watch, in the coming days and weeks, there´s going to be a massive effort to get Putin to the table.'
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