The following article by Philip Rucker was posted on the Washington Post website May 16, 2018:
They called it “the gorilla in the room.”
Donald Trump’s desire to meet Vladimir Putin was so fierce that as Trump and his team prepared for their 2013 trip to Moscow to host the Miss Universe pageant they strategized about how the American reality-television star might be able to huddle with the Russian president.
As soon as the deal was struck for Miss Universe to take place in Russia, pageant president Paula Shugart told Rob Goldstone, a publicist and fixer who helped bring the pageant to Russia, “Oh, God, he’s going to want to meet Putin,” according to Goldstone’s testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee released Wednesday. Continue reading “‘The gorilla in the room’: Inside Trump’s failed efforts to meet Putin in 2013”