Fiona Hill
๐ค SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
Helsinki, absolutely.
Because a lot of people have conflated what happened at Helsinki with what happened in one of the first encounters between Trump and Putin at the G20 meeting.
That's right, yeah.
in Hamburg, where he took the translator's notes.
And, you know, what you've got to think about is the translator's notes are for themselves in shorthand because they're doing this consecutive translation fast in real time.
You know, so it's just a kind of their own, you know, memories.
But in that meeting, you had...
Rex Tillerson, who was taking notes.
And Rex Tillerson put his notes in his inside pocket.
Trump didn't take his notes.
And Rex Tillerson related to the rest of us what happened.
But then there's an episode later where Trump goes to dinner in Hamburg, and he doesn't take his own translator.
And Melania is sitting, the First Lady is sitting next to Putin, of course.
Trump makes his way over, can't resist, you know, kind of coming to talk to Putin.
And then it's all on the Russian translator.
And, you know, we only know what happened then from what we could get related to us by Melania's stuff, which is, you know, there.
But it wasn't a very big interaction.
It's all, you know, there in cameras, you know, sort of trying to lip read, you know, looking at the camera to see what's going on.
But at Helsinki...
The translator, you know, because we'd already been forewarned, is forearmed, you know, made sure that her notes were not taken away.