Donald Trump met with Russian President Putin at the G20 summit two weeks ago in an informal meeting that had been kept secret until Tuesday night. The undisclosed conversation reportedly lasted as long as an hour, came after an official one that had been made public. The secret meeting included just Trump, Putin and Russian translator, as The Washington Post’s Karen DeYoung and Philip Rucker report.
Probably we’ll never really know what was said. The questions is, why did President Trump see fit to do something that may look so suspicious and raise even more controversy about his relationship with Russia?
Here are couple of theories why did Trump meet secretly with Putin;
1) There is something wicked or criminal going on
This is the preferred theory of all Trump’s opponents. It’s the idea that President Trump met secretly with Putin because they had some business that needed to be discussed away from public. Even United States Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, wasn’t present at the meeting, who was the only other U.S. official in the earlier, two-hour-plus meeting.
It looks like President Trump was trying to avoid this being news. If the White House knew about this and said nothing, that looks suspicious. If Trump kept it secret from the White House itself, that looks suspicious, as well.
If there is something nefarious going on, undisclosed conversation out of earshot of other world leaders would be a perfect place to do it.
2) Trump is not concerned to how this might be perceived
Many of Trump’s actions are under the rubric of Adam Carolla’s “Stupid or Liar” theory before. This reason would be the “stupid” part of that equation.
Given the Russia investigation is targeting Donald Trump himself, in addition to his much-criticized friendliness toward Putin, it’s difficult to think that Trump is simply unaware of how something like this might be perceived. But Trump has demonstrated a pretty good lack of political awareness in plenty of other areas, including numerous instances with regard to the Russia investigation.
President Trump also has shown that he disregards the advice of those around him, so even if someone in the White House was telling him to tread lightly around Putin, there is no guarantee he would heed that advice.
If Trump is indeed oblivious to how this kind of thing could play out, he’s got real problems on that front.
Source: washingtonpost.com