President Donald Trump told The New York Times in an interview published online Wednesday that he mostly exchanged "pleasantries" during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G-20 Summit — though the subject of adoption also came up.
Trump told Times reporters in the Oval Office that during a dinner for leaders and their spouses he simply decided to walk over to where his wife, first lady Melania Trump, was seated, which happened to be next to Putin.
"The meal was going toward dessert," Trump said. "I went down just to say hello to Melania, and while I was there I said hello to Putin. Really, pleasantries more than anything else. It was not a long conversation, but it was, you know, could be 15 minutes. Just talked about things. Actually, it was very interesting, we talked about adoption."
Trump pointed out that the same subject came up during a meeting between his son, Donald Trump, Jr., and a Russian lawyer in June 2016.
"I actually talked about Russian adoption with him," Trump said of Putin. "Which is interesting because it was a part of the conversation that Don had in that meeting."
Trump told the Times he did not at the time of his talk with Putin know about the meeting his son had during the campaign. Though Natalia Veselnitskaya brought up the subject of adoption with Trump Jr., an email chain released by him showed the purpose of the meeting had been for Veselnitskaya to provide damaging information on Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Trump said no such dirt was needed by his campaign.
"There wasn't much I could say about Hillary Clinton that was worse than what I was already saying," he told the Times. "Unless somebody said that she shot somebody in the back, there wasn’t much I could add to my repertoire."
Putin's government shut off adoptions of Russian children to Americans in 2012 in retaliation of the United States taking passing the Magnitsky Act, which punished Russian officials believed involved in the torture and death of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
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