MSNBC host Antonia Hylton has suggested that President Donald Trump’s aides, particularly Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, may have been “frightened” by what they had witnessed during the president’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
On Saturday night’s episode of MSNBC’s The Weekend: Primetime, Hylton spoke to former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul—an Obama appointee—about Trump’s summit with Putin in Anchorage on Friday.
“A lot of the press corps that was there, they reported in the minutes and hours after the presser that they saw members of the administration, like Karoline Leavitt, look ashen, almost frightened after what they had seen behind closed doors. What did that indicate to you?” Hylton asked McFaul.
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McFaul responded, “We should all be glad that we did not go to Alaska, because I was in Helsinki with you. And I was in Geneva when President Biden met. They traveled a long way for nothing in return, those journalists.”
He continued, ”But that suggests to me that this was a bigger disaster than they’re letting on. To your point, they’re trying to spin it, although they’re not even trying to spin it. That’s a really interesting thing.”
”When I worked at the White House and we would have meetings like this, I was the SAO—the senior administration official—that would call up journalists, that would call The New York Times to say, ‘This is what was discussed,’ to push it this way. They’re not even attempting to do that because they know they don’t have anything to work with.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
The summit in Alaska was largely considered a failure as the highly anticipated peace deal between Russia and Ukraine failed to materialize.
After a significant amount of pomp and circumstance that included a literal red carpet and three hours of talks, Trump told reporters, “We didn’t get there—but we have a very good chance of getting there.”
“There’s no deal until there’s a deal,” Trump said. “I will call up NATO in a little while. I will call up the various people that I think are appropriate, and I’ll, of course, call up President Zelensky and tell them about today’s meeting. It’s ultimately up to them.”
Prior to the summit, Leavitt was on the defensive, taking aim at naysayers who dared to criticize Trump.
Appearing on Fox & Friends on Thursday morning, Leavitt said of the president’s critics, “I think it’s pathetic that some of the chatter that we see from these so-called experts who have zero accomplishments on their own résumés to point to.”
“President Trump knows what he’s doing.”
