In a hot mic moment Monday, President Donald Trump appeared to be reassuring French President Emmanuel Macron that Russian President Vladimir Putin was serious about making peace in Ukraine.
'I think he wants to make a deal. I think he wants to make a deal for me,' Trump whispered to Macron in the White House East Room before their meeting started. 'Do you understand that? As crazy as it sounds.'
Macron appeared skeptical that Putin was serious about ending the three and a half year conflict that Russia had started.
Trump gathered Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and a handful of European leaders at the White House on Monday for a debrief of sorts after his high stakes meeting with Putin on Friday in Anchorage, Alaska.
While Trump said alongside Putin on Friday that they had had an 'extremely productive meeting,' Trump was unable to get Putin to agree to a ceasefire, with the Russian leader resistant to stopping the fighting telling reporters that Russia still needed to 'eliminate the primary roots, the primary causes, of that conflict.'
