Trump reveals 10 striking takeaways from Putin summit in Hannity interview

President Donald Trump was tight-lipped after his high-stakes summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday but offered some key insight into the meeting to Fox News’ Sean Hannity in an exclusive interview.

Here are the key takeaways from Trump’s highly anticipated meeting with the Russian leader as shared with Hannity. 

Trump told Hannity that "as far as I’m concerned, there’s no deal until there’s a deal." He noted, however, that "we did make a lot of progress."

The president noted to Hannity that he believes Putin is not only open to peace but that he "wants to see it done." 

TRUMP SAYS HE 'WON'T BE HAPPY' IF PUTIN DOES NOT AGREE TO A CEASEFIRE IN UKRAINE DURING ALASKA SUMMIT

Pressed by Hannity to share what the "one big issue you don’t agree on" that kept the leaders from walking away with a ceasefire deal, Trump declined to share. He said, "No, I’d rather not. I guess somebody’s going to go public with it, they’ll figure it out, but no, I don’t want to do that, I want to see if we can get it done." 

After taking such a major step as to physically meet with the Russian president, Trump said it is now "up to [Ukrainian] President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy to get it done and maybe the European nations, they have to get involved a little bit."

The president said that he would be open to attending a trilateral meeting with the presidents of Ukraine and Russia, saying, "If they’d like, I’ll be at that meeting. They’re going to set up a meeting now between President Zelenskyy and President Putin and myself, I guess, not that I want to be there, but I want to get it done." 

He added, "I’ll be there." 

PUTIN PRAISES TRUMP’S ‘SINCERE’ PEACE EFFORTS, SIGNALS POSSIBLE US-RUSSIA NUCLEAR DEAL

Trump said that he would rate the meeting a 10 out of 10, saying, "I think the meeting was a 10 in the sense that we got along great." 

Asked what he thought finally brought Putin to the negotiating table, Trump answered, "I don’t want to say anything brought him, he’s a very smart guy, nothing brought him to the table, so to speak." 

"I think he respects our country now, he didn’t respect it under Biden, I can tell you that, he had no respect for it." 

Trump also commented that he "was so happy" that Putin shared his belief during their joint press conference that the Russia-Ukraine war would have never happened had he been in office at the time. 

ZELENSKYY NOT INVITED TO UPCOMING TRUMP, PUTIN TALKS — WHITE HOUSE SAYS THIS WAS THE REASON

Without hesitating, Trump said that his advice to Zelenskyy after Friday’s meeting with Putin would be "make a deal." 

Trump shared that Putin told him he believed the 2020 election was rigged because of the widespread mail-in voting, saying, "you can’t have a great democracy with mail-in voting." 

GOP praises Trump's posture during Alaska summit, Dems cry foul over Trump's apparent coziness with Putin

As President Donald Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday, reactions from lawmakers back in Washington, D.C., flooded in, including one Republican who said he wants the president nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize following the summit. 

While Republicans largely praised Trump for an assertive posture and for his efforts working towards peace, Democrats accused the president of being too friendly with Putin. 

"President Trump, I think, is just crystal clear that Putin's back is against the wall and I think he demonstrated that clearness with his very first action before saying a word with the fact that he flew B-2 bombers over [Putin's] head," said Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla. "That was not on accident, obviously. For him to fly a B-2 bomber over Vladimir Putin's head, it was a signal to him that when President Trump says, 'Hey there could be very serious consequences.'"

MIKE POMPEO ADVISES AMERICANS NOT TO 'OVERREAD' THIS PART OF TRUMP AND PUTIN'S MEETING 

However, while Mast expressed that he saw Trump challenging Putin, Democratic California Rep. Eric Swalwell described the summit as akin to "Trump toast[ing] Putin like he was giving him the lifetime achievement award."

"What a Kremlin kiss a-- our president is," Swalwell added. 

Meanwhile, as the meeting was kicking off, Rep. Eugene Vindman, D-Va., said, "The very fact that Putin will be on American soil is a huge win for him."

"First, he is legitimized and not a global pariah. Second, he would be subject to arrest in 123 countries due to his ICC arrest warrant. Here [sic] is walking free," Vindman lamented. 

FROM ADMIRATION TO ALASKA: A TIMELINE OF TRUMP AND PUTIN’S HIGH-STAKES ENCOUNTERS

"Trump invited a dictator onto U.S. soil just to get his s*** rocked," added the official X account for the Democratic Party.

But Republicans rallied around the president's handling of the summit, with Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., announcing Friday night after the summit concluded that he intends to draft a Nobel Peace Prize nomination for Trump.

Some Republicans took the opportunity Friday to slam the former Biden administration for failing to take the necessary action to halt the war in Ukraine.  

"When Joe Biden became president he waved the sanctions on Nord Stream 2, he gave Putin and Russia a multi-billion dollar gift, and the reason that caused the war is because Putin had refrained from invading Ukraine because he didn't want to damage the natural gas pipelines that run through Ukraine," Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said Friday in an interview on Fox News. 

During the summit, while Putin was addressing reporters, he said that he believed the claim from Trump and Republicans that had Trump been president when the war began instead of Biden, it likely never would have started in the first place.

"The key to ending this war honorably and justly is to create an infrastructure of deterrence that Biden and Obama failed to do — which will prevent a third invasion," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said following Friday's summit. 

The South Carolina senator added that following the summit, a meeting between Trump, Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will be necessary. The senator argued that, with such a meeting, he would be "cautiously optimistic" that the war could end "well before Christmas."

"If that meeting fails to materialize, I think President Trump may have to go all in to punish those who buy cheap Russian oil and gas, propping up Putin’s war machine," Graham concluded.

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