Fox News’ Jacqui Heinrich, who witnessed Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin ignore reporters’ questions after their summit Friday, said everyone in the room was “surprised” by the president’s silence.
Heinrich, the network’s senior White House correspondent—whom Trump has previously targeted—spoke about the summit’s conclusion with anchor Brian Kilmeade, who also said he hadn’t expected things to wrap up with the usually talkative Trump walking away without taking questions.
“I was surprised no questions,” Kilmeade said, after Trump and Putin were vague about what—if anything—was accomplished at the Alaska meeting, which began with Trump clapping and rolling out the red carpet for the Russian leader, who is accused of war crimes. “I was surprised no details on what progress was made,” Kilmeade continued.
“You and me and everyone else in this room was surprised,” Heinrich replied.
“We were told we would have an opportunity to put questions to both leaders after a joint press conference in the event that meeting went well enough that they could set the stage for a second meeting. And President Trump said if that didn’t happen, he was likely to call off the joint presser and just address the media solo and send people home. Neither of those things happened,” she said.
“And what was really stunning to me, as someone who has been in a lot of these press conferences, a few things were very unusual,” she continued.
Heinrich noted how Putin spoke first and in his native language, despite the U.S. being the host country.
“Putin started right off in Russian, and we all had to get our headsets on and listen to him rattle off this diatribe about the history of the U.S.-Russia relationship,” she said, adding that the Russian leader repeated phrasing about Ukraine that put the onus on them to end the war that Russia started.
Heinrich went on to say that the joint appearance was “unusual” and “atypical.”
“The way that it felt in the room was not good. It did not seem like things went well, and it seemed like Putin came in and steamrolled, got right into what he wanted to say and got his photo next to the president and then left,” she said.
“Of course,” she noted, “that is only the piece of the picture that we have right now, and certainly President Trump, who is the host and the president, would not want to, I think, enable something that would make him look weak. We are eagerly awaiting to hear the background on that.”
When reached for comment, the White House did not answer the Daily Beast’s question about why neither Trump nor Putin took reporters’ questions.
As for Heinrich’s report, a press aide directed the Daily Beast to White House Communications Director Steven Cheung’s brief post on X in reply to the tail end of her comments to Kilmeade.
“Total fake news,” was the response from Cheung, who just yesterday tried to criticize California Gov. Gavin Newsom for avoiding questions after a speech—except Newsom answered nine questions, nine more than Trump did Friday.
