President Donald Trump ought to give the billionaire owner of the New England Patriots a call ahead of his "half-baked" plan to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, a New York Times opinion columnist suggested Tuesday.
Trump is scheduled to meet with Putin on Friday in Anchorage, Alaska. The meeting will focus mainly on Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the potential for a ceasefire.
Bret Stephens, a Pulitzer-Prize-winning columnist for the Times who writes about foreign policy and domestic politics, gave Trump a piece of advice: ask Robert Kraft how a meeting with Putin can go south. Kraft, he said, "knows what it’s like to be fleeced by the Russian president."
Kraft showed Putin one of his $25,000 Super Bowl rings during a 2005 trip with other American business leaders. And Putin never gave it back.
“And he put it on and he goes, ‘I can kill someone with this ring,’” Kraft said in 2013. “I put my hand out and he put it in his pocket, and three KGB guys got around him and walked out.”
Kraft said the Bush administration urged him to pretend the ring was a gift, Stephens said.