OSAKA, Japan _ President Donald Trump issued a warning to Russian President Vladimir Putin not to meddle in the 2020 election when the two met here Friday on the sidelines of the Group of 20 conference.
But the exchange seemed less like a stern rebuke than a sarcastic joke among friends.
After a reporter asked whether he was going to issue such a warning to Putin, Trump took the opportunity before the assembled cameras to leave no doubt that he had followed through.
"Yes, of course I will," Trump responded before turning somewhat toward Putin.
"Don't meddle in our election, please," Trump said, smiling and holding up a finger toward Putin. "Don't meddle in our election."
What remained in doubt was the president's sincerity, given his playful demeanor with Putin _ he also winked at him in the meeting room _ and his pattern of minimizing matters of Russia's involvement in American politics.
Trump has repeatedly scoffed at the determination, first by U.S. intelligence officials and then by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, that Russia interfered in the 2016 election in order to help him defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton.
It has been nearly a year since Trump's first summit with Putin in Helsinki, Finland, where the president openly accepted the Russian leader's denial of having meddled in the U.S. election and questioned his own government's conclusions to the contrary.
None of Trump's nine bilateral meetings over two days on the sidelines of the G-20 conference here were more eagerly anticipated or laden with subtext than this one.
It also comes just more than a month since Mueller issued the findings of his 22-month investigation, which determined that Russia indeed sought to undermine Clinton in 2016 and that Trump, in at least 10 instances, attempted to undermine the investigation.
The two leaders were scheduled to meet at the previous G-20 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in December, but Trump canceled the meeting after Russia seized three Ukrainian ships and imprisoned 23 Ukrainian sailors, who all remain in Russian custody.
In his other comments to reporters before the media was ushered out of the room, Trump called the meeting "a great honor" and said he and Putin would be discussing "trade, some disarmament" and "protectionism."
"A lot of very positive things are going to come out of the relationship," Trump said.
Unlike the Helsinki summit, where Trump and Putin met alone for more than two hours with only interpreters present, other aides to both leaders were in Friday's meeting.
