Love in a cold climate: Putin romances Trump in Alaska with talk of rigged elections and a trip to Moscow
Donald Trump turned to gaze at Vladimir Putin as the Russian president publicly endorsed his view that, had Trump been president instead of Joe Biden, the war in Ukraine would never have happened.
'Today President Trump was saying that if he was president back then, there would be no war, and I'm quite sure that it would indeed be so,' Putin said. 'I can confirm that.'
Vladimir, you complete me, Trump might have replied. To hell with all those Democrats, democrats, wokesters, fake news reporters and factcheckers. Here is a man who speaks my authoritarian alternative facts language.
The damned doubters had been worried about Friday's big summit at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, a cold war-era airbase under a big sky and picturesque mountains on the outskirts of Anchorage, Alaska.
Related: No Ukraine ceasefire but a PR victory for Putin: key takeaways from Trump's Alaska summit with Russian president
They feared that it might resemble Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Adolf Hitler in Munich 1938, or Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin carving up the world for the great powers at the Yalta Conference in 1945.
It was worse than that.
Trump, 79, purportedly the most powerful man in the world, literally rolled out the red carpet for a Russian dictator indicted for alleged war crimes over the abduction and transfer of thousands of Ukrainian children. Putin's troops have also been accused of indiscriminate murder, rape and torture on an appalling scale.
In more than 100 countries, the 72-year-old would have been arrested the moment he set foot on the tarmac. In America, he was treated to a spontaneous burst of applause from the waiting Trump, who gave him a long, lingering handshake and a ride in 'the Beast', the presidential limousine.
Putin could be seen cackling on the back seat, looking like the cat who got the cream. As a former KGB man, did he leave behind a bug or two?
Three hours later, the men walked on stage for an anticlimactic 12-minute press conference against a blue backdrop printed with the words 'Pursuing peace'. Putin is reportedly 170cm (5.7ft) tall, while Trump is 190cm (6.3ft), yet the Russian seemed be the dominant figure.
Curiously, given that the US was hosting, Putin was allowed to speak first, which gave him the opportunity to frame the narrative. More curiously still, the deferential Trump spoke for less time than his counterpart, though he did slip in a compliment: 'I've always had a fantastic relationship with President Putin – with Vladimir.'
The low-energy Trump declined to take any questions from reporters – a rare thing indeed for the attention monster and wizard of 'the weave' – and shed little light on the prospect of a ceasefire in Ukraine.
Perhaps he wanted to give his old pals at Fox News the exclusive. Having snubbed the world's media, Trump promptly sat down and spilled the beans – well, a few of them – to host Sean Hannity, a cheerleader who has even spoken at a Trump rally.
The president revealed: 'Vladimir Putin said something – one of the most interesting things. He said: 'Your election was rigged because you have mail-in voting … No country has mail-in voting. It's impossible to have mail-in voting and have honest elections.'
'And he said that to me because we talked about 2020. He said: 'You won that election by so much and that's how we got here.' He said: 'And if you would have won, we wouldn't have had a war. You'd have all these millions of people alive now instead of dead. And he said: 'You lost it because of mail-in voting. It was a rigged election.''
In other words, the leader of one of the world's oldest democracies was taking advice from a man who won last year's Russian election with more than 87% of the vote and changed the constitution so he can stay in power until 2036. In this warped retelling of history, the insurrectionists of January 6 were actually trying to stop a war.
Evidently Putin knows that whispering Trump's favourite lies into his ear is the way to his heart. It worked. The Russian leader, visiting the United States for the first time in a decade, got his wish of being welcomed back on the world stage and made to look the equal of the US president.
He could also go home reassured that, despite a recent rough patch, and despite Trump's brief bromance with Elon Musk, he loves you yeah, yeah, yeah.
'Next time in Moscow,' he told Trump in English. 'Oh, that's an interesting one,' the US president responded. 'I'll get a little heat on that one, but I could see it possibly happening.'
Trump's humiliation was complete. But all was not lost. At least no one was talking about Jeffrey Epstein or the price of vegetables.
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