The interview became thoughtful and useful.” But from that point on, I had his undivided attention. “He can’t believe I’ve done this,” Wallace says. Photograph by Alexei Nikolsky/TASS via Getty Images Tough questions for a tough cookie: Chris Wallace interviews Russian president Vladimir Putin, Helsinki, July 16, 2018. Wallace brought along a copy of the indictment, and with an outstretched hand, offered it to Putin. Three days earlier, in Washington, special counsel Robert Mueller had announced indictments of 12 Russian officials in the GRU, the Russian military’s foreign intelligence agency, for electoral interference. “A prop is always a good thing to use if you can,” he explains. He also had a surprise in store for Putin. Their interview began with big-picture issues-global terrorism, nuclear disarmament, policy toward Iran-but Wallace soon brought up the election.
“Putin likes to affect a disinterested manner, like a bad boy in the back of the classroom-sort of an ‘I’m putting up with you’ quality,” Wallace notes. “I don’t see any reason why it would be.”Īfter the summit, one American journalist was permitted to interview President Putin face-to-face: Chris Wallace ’69, the longtime host of Fox News Sunday. Putin “just said it’s not Russia,” Trump declared. Yet, in Helsinki, Trump apparently took Putin’s assertion that Russia had not interfered at face value, siding with him over American intelligence.
Dan Coats, President Trump’s appointee as director of national intelligence, concurred. intelligence agencies had by then concluded that Russian interlopers had meddled with the American presidential election of 2016. In July 2018, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump held a summit meeting in Helsinki, Finland.