From our “Not The Onion” file: One British tabloid is speculating about whether Vladimir Putin gave President Trump a “bugged” gift.
“EYES ON THE BALL: Could Putin have BUGGED the football he gave to Trump by stitching undetectable chip into the fabric?” said the headline in The Sun. “Security experts claim Kremlin spy wizards could have rigged the ball which the Russian President handed to Trump,” said the sub-headline.
“Russia could have bugged the World Cup football which Vladimir Putin handed to Donald Trump, security experts have dramatically claimed. The Russian leader gave the US President the gift during one of the lighter moments of their summit in Helsinki, Finland,” said the paper.
The Sun cited no less a credible news source than TMZ, which wrote its own story about the conspiracy theory.- READ MORE
[divider][/divider]Unbowed by swirling criticism of his summit encounter with Vladimir Putin, President Donald Trump swiftly invited the Russian leader to the White House this fall for a second get-together. Cleanup from the first continued with no letup Thursday, as Trump belatedly decided Putin’s “incredible offer” of shared U.S.-Russia investigations was no good after all.
A White House meeting would be a dramatic extension of legitimacy to the Russian leader, who has long been isolated by the West for activities in Ukraine, Syria and beyond and is believed to have interfered in the 2016 presidential election that sent Trump to the presidency. No Russian leader has visited the White House in nearly a decade.
Trump asked National Security Adviser John Bolton to invite Putin, and “those discussions are already underway,” Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Thursday. Trump earlier had tweeted that he looked forward to “our second meeting” as he defended his performance at Monday’s summit, in which the two leaders conferred on a range of issues including terrorism, Israeli security, nuclear proliferation and North Korea.
“There are many answers, some easy and some hard, to these problems … but they can ALL be solved!” Trump tweeted.
There was no immediate reaction from the Kremlin to the invitation.
News of the invite appeared to catch even the president’s top intelligence official by surprise.
“Say that again,” National Intelligence Director Dan Coats responded, when informed of the invitation during an appearance at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado.
“OK,” he continued, pausing for a deep breath. “That’s going to be special.”
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