After Donald Trump’s bizarre “summit” meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland, on Monday, it wasn’t only United States and Europan media who were left wondering if Trump was somehow being controlled by Putin — the Russian government’s own state-run television network ran programming on which commentators were stunned by Trump’s performance at a press conference following a private meeting with Putin, according to Julia Davis , an expert on Russian media who regularly views and translates Russian state TV broadcasts.
Davis posted a quotation from a Russian state media political discussion show — a program that could be described as the Russian equivalent of Fox & Friends — that aired on Tuesday. On that discussion, a host said that Trump “smells like an agent of the Kremlin,” due to his repeated negative comments about his own country. The video of the broadcast has appeared in the original Russian language on YouTube .
In the press conference on Monday, Trump called the United States “foolish,” according to a Time transcript. He also appeared to side with Putin, who — according to Trump — gave a “powerful” denial that Russia had interfered in the 2016 United States presidential election. U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia did indeed wage a cyber-attack against the election, and on Friday, as the Inquisitr reported, Russia investigation Special Counsel Robert Mueller issued a detailed indictment of 12 Russian military intelligence officers for carrying out that cyber-attack.
In another excerpt from the Russian state TV political discussion show, according to Davis in a translation posted to her Twitter account, the host described Trump as “licking Putin’s boots.”
“Why did Schwarzenegger describe him as a wet noodle?… He said nothing about the annexation, [Russian] aggression or Skripal,” the host said, as quoted by Davis.
Movie star and former California Governor Arnold Schwarznegger posted a video to his Instagram account in which he lambasted Trump as “a little wet noodle” over his performance at the summit, according to Entertainment Weekly . The Terminator star also said that Trump behave like “a little fanboy” around Putin.
Media around the world reacted with shock and outrage at Trump’s performance with Putin, according to a CNBC report. The Guardian newspaper ran a headline calling Trump “nothing short of treasonous,” while Britain’s Daily Mirror ridiculed Trump as “Putin’s poodle.” In the United States, the New York Daily News , on its front page, called Trump’s performance “open treason.”
On the other hand, the Trump-supporting news site Breitbart lauded the summit as “a success the media can’t admit.”
“Trump advocated for American interests without conceding anything to Putin other than his dignity,” the “alt-right” news outlet claimed.
