President Trump told Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday that the U.S. and Russia must find a way to “get along” for the sake of peace around the world.
“I really think the world wants to see us get along,” Trump said in his introductory remarks to Putin at the start of their summit meeting in Helsinki.
“We are the two great nuclear powers, and we have 90 percent of the nuclear and that’s not a good thing, it’s a bad thing,” Trump said. “And I think we hopefully can do something about that, because it’s not a positive force, it’s a negative force. So we’ll be talking about that among other things.”
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JUST IN: President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin meet and make statements at the presidential palace in Helsinki, Finland, ahead of their one-on-one meeting
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Trump stressed that nuclear weapons was one of several issues the two men would discuss, and made it clear there there are many thorny issues to get through. Trump didn’t mention the conflict in Syria or the alleged hacking into Democratic servers by Russian officials, but stressed there are positive and negative aspects of the relationship that must be handled at the meeting.
“Most importantly, we have a lot of good things to talk about and things to talk about,” Trump said. “We have discussions on everything from trade to military to missiles to nuclear to China. We’ll be talking a little bit about China, our mutual friend, President Xi.”
Despite tensions between the two countries, Trump said he wanted to put the relationship on a more stable footing.
[Russia agrees with Trump: US is to blame for worse-than-ever relations]
“I think we have great opportunities together,” Trump said. “Two countries that frankly we have not been getting along very well for the last number of years. I’ve been here not too long, and it’s getting close to two years, but I think we will end up having an extraordinary relationship.”
“I hope so,” Trump added. “I’ve been saying, and I’m sure you’ve heard over the years and as I campaigned that getting along with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing.”
Trump also congratulated Putin for a successful World Cup final over the weekend, after Putin gave a very brief set of remarks to start the summit.
