President Donald Trump on Wednesday criticized media coverage of his upcoming meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, defending the planned summit and saying outlets are quoting "fired losers and really dumb people" like his first-term national security adviser John Bolton.
"Very unfair media is at work on my meeting with Putin. Constantly quoting fired losers and really dumb people like John Bolton, who just said that, even though the meeting is on American soil, 'Putin has already won,'" Trump posted on his Truth Social account. "What's that all about?"
He further accused the "Fake News" of "working overtime."
"If I got Moscow and Leningrad free, as part of the deal with Russia, the Fake News would say that I made a bad deal!" Trump added. "But now they've been caught. Look at all of the real news that's coming out about their CORRUPTION. They are sick and dishonest people, who probably hate our Country. But it doesn't matter because we are winning on everything!!!"
The Trump-Putin summit is scheduled for Friday at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, on the outskirts of Anchorage, Alaska, marking the first U.S.–Russia summit on American soil since 1988.
Bolton has repeatedly criticized Trump for allowing the summit to be held on U.S. soil.
Sunday, he told ABC News' "This Week" that the summit could undermine Ukraine and the Western alliance while giving the Russian leader too much control.
"I think Trump has made some mistakes already," Bolton said in the interview, where he warned that the president, through the meeting, is legitimizing the "pariah leader of a rogue state."
Bolton has also called the summit a gift for Putin, commenting last week that "This is not quite as bad as Trump inviting the Taliban to Camp David to talk about the peace negotiations in Afghanistan, but it certainly reminds one of that."
He added that "The only better place for Putin than Alaska would be if the summit were being held in Moscow," and called the setup for the meeting a "great victory for Putin."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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