Trump Used Alaska Summit To Show Military Power To Putin, Scott Bessent Says

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent weighed in Tuesday on President Donald Trump’s controversial summit in Alaska with Russian President Vladimir Putin last week.

While appearing on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Bessent told host Joe Kernen that he wanted to “set the record straight” about how the meeting went.

“Alaska was a show of force by President Trump. He invited President Putin to land that the Russians used to own. He displayed a huge amount of military hardware and then did a flyover,” Bessent said.

The Trump administration official then compared the meeting to “inviting your uncontrollable neighbor to your house and showing him your gun case.”

Calling Trump’s follow-up meeting on Monday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House “very good,” Bessent declared that he has a “strong belief” that Trump will eventually help secure a meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy.

“We had a very good meeting with [Zelenskyy] and his team in the Oval [Office] for about an hour and a half, and then we met with the European leaders who [were] an incredible group to have in the White House, all led by President Trump,” Bessent said.

He added: “And yes, the culmination of that was a call with President Putin, and my strong belief is that there will be a bilateral meeting between President Putin and President Zelenskyy. And that’s the only way to end this conflict, is to get the two sides talking.”

“Both sides are ready for this terrible [Ukraine-Russia] conflict to end,” Bessent later said.

After Trump and Putin wrapped up last week’s summit without announcing a ceasefire in the war in Ukraine, many political leaders were critical of the outcome.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) slammed the meeting as an “embarrassment to the United States,” and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) confronted Trump for “selling out Ukraine.”

Meanwhile, Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton opined on CNN that Putin had “won the summit” over a “tired” Trump.