{"id":160898,"date":"2025-08-16T17:32:05","date_gmt":"2025-08-16T17:32:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/love-in-a-cold-climate-putin-romances-trump-in-alaska-with-talk-of-rigged-elections-and-a-trip-to-moscow-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2025-08-16T17:32:05","modified_gmt":"2025-08-16T17:32:05","slug":"love-in-a-cold-climate-putin-romances-trump-in-alaska-with-talk-of-rigged-elections-and-a-trip-to-moscow-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/love-in-a-cold-climate-putin-romances-trump-in-alaska-with-talk-of-rigged-elections-and-a-trip-to-moscow-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"Love in a cold climate: Putin romances Trump in Alaska with talk of rigged elections and a trip to Moscow – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

For those who feared the summit on Ukraine might resemble Chamberlain\u2019s appeasement of Hitler in 1938, the reality was worse
That was the moment he knew it was true love.
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<\/a> would never have happened.
\u201cToday President Trump was saying that if he was president back then, there would be no war, and I\u2019m quite sure that it would indeed be so,\u201d Putin said. \u201cI can confirm that.\u201d
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\u2019s big summit<\/a> at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, a cold war-era airbase under a big sky and picturesque mountains on the outskirts of Anchorage, Alaska.
They feared that it might resemble Neville Chamberlain\u2019s appeasement of Adolf Hitler <\/a>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<\/a> over the abduction and transfer of thousands of Ukrainian children. Putin\u2019s 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 \u201cthe Beast\u201d, 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<\/a> against a blue backdrop printed with the words \u201cPursuing peace\u201d. 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: \u201cI\u2019ve always had a fantastic relationship with President Putin \u2013 with Vladimir<\/em>.\u201d
The low-energy Trump declined to take any questions from reporters \u2013 a rare thing indeed for the attention monster and wizard of \u201cthe weave\u201d \u2013 and shed little light on the prospect of a ceasefire in Ukraine<\/a>.
Perhaps he wanted to give his old pals at Fox News the exclusive. Having snubbed the world\u2019s media, Trump promptly sat down and spilled the beans \u2013 well, a few of them \u2013 to host Sean Hannity<\/a>, a cheerleader who has even spoken at a Trump rally.
The president revealed: \u201cVladimir Putin said something \u2013 one of the most interesting things. He said: \u2018Your election was rigged because you have mail-in voting \u2026 No country has mail-in voting. It\u2019s impossible to have mail-in voting and have honest elections.\u2019
\u201cAnd he said that to me because we talked about 2020. He said: \u2018You won that election by so much and that\u2019s how we got here.\u2019 He said: \u2018And if you would have won, we wouldn\u2019t have had a war. You\u2019d have all these millions of people alive now instead of dead. And he said: \u2018You lost it because of mail-in voting. It was a rigged election.\u2019\u201d
In other words, the leader of one of the world\u2019s oldest democracies was taking advice from a man who won last year\u2019s Russian election<\/a> 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\u2019s 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\u2019s brief bromance with Elon Musk, he loves you yeah, yeah, yeah.
\u201cNext time in Moscow,\u201d he told Trump in English. \u201cOh, that\u2019s an interesting one,\u201d the US president responded. \u201cI\u2019ll get a little heat on that one, but I could see it possibly happening.\u201d
Trump\u2019s humiliation was complete. But all was not lost. At least no one was talking about Jeffrey Epstein<\/a> or the price of vegetables<\/a>.<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For those who feared the summit on Ukraine might resemble Chamberlain\u2019s appeasement of Hitler in 1938, the reality was worseThat was the moment he knew it was true love.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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":160899,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-160898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160898\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/160899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}