Former Aide Reveals How Putin Played Trump Like A Fiddle On Phone Call

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Fiona Hill, a former senior National Security Council official and expert on European and Russian affairs, has shared new insights into President Donald Trump’s previous interactions with Russian President Vladimir Putin — and how she believes Putin actually taunted Trump during their conversations.

In an extensive interview with Foreign Affairs published on Thursday, Hill described Trump as unprepared for meetings with his Russian counterpart and overly focused on personal interactions rather than diplomatic strategy.

Hill, who served Trump during his first term and testified during his first impeachment for attempting to pressure Ukraine, highlighted one incident as proof.

“The very first time I was in one of the phone calls with Putin, I was listening very carefully to the Russian, because the interpreters don’t always capture everything, they don’t capture the nuances, particularly when it’s the Russian interpreter who’s translating into a language that’s also not their native language, all kinds of things are missing,” she recalled.

Trump, who has long expressed his admiration for Putin and has recently echoed Russian talking points in his efforts to facilitate a peace deal to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, described the exchange as “great,” she said.

But Hill remembered thinking that it really wasn’t.

“There was all kinds of menace in what Putin had said, he chooses his words very carefully,” she explained.

“Many times when Putin and Trump are interacting, Putin’s actually making fun of him,” she continued. “It’s just it’s completely lost in the translation. I can give lots of episodes of this, or he’s goading him and urging him on to something, because he’s trying to see how he’ll react and the translation smooths over all that. That context is absolutely missing. And he doesn’t do a readout afterwards.”

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“All of this is amateur hour,” added Hill, who is now a senior foreign policy fellow on the U.S. and Europe at Washington-based think tank Brookings.

Listen to the full interview here: