“McConnell, Cornyn join letter questioning Trump invite to Putin”, 25 September 2026 (Photo via The Hill — the original report)
As it ran on the front
I already asked this question once, back in August, and I got an answer. I'm asking it again now, not because I doubt the answer, but because the second time it comes out a different shape than the first.
Here's the question: seven Republican senators — McConnell and Cornyn's names are on the letter, five others besides — wrote to the President on Friday. They didn't ask what he thinks of Vladimir Putin. They asked him to explain, in writing, why he invited Putin to the G20 Leaders' Summit in Miami. That's the question on the page. Not his confidence. Not his opinion of the man. Why the invitation.…
…(cont) I keep going back to a different piece of paper, and I know it's not the one they asked about.
On May — I don't have the exact date, the wire doesn't give me one, just the month — Don Trump Jr. got married. A Russian oligarch, described as close to Putin, paid for the celebration. That's not my phrase, that's the reporting. Bettina Trump was asked about it on September 14th and called it being "Fortunate to have wonderful friends." Four months between the vows and the explanation. I'm sorry, I keep going back to this, but four months is a long stretch to sit on an answer that short.
I keep going back to it a second way, because of the word. Not the oligarch, not the wedding — the word "friend." Someone close enough to Putin to be worth mentioning in the same sentence as Putin, and the word the family chose for them, in public, on the record, was friend. I'm sorry to come back to it again — I've read plenty of wedding write-ups, and I've never seen "close to a head of state currently at war" used as a character reference before. Maybe that's ordinary in some families. I wouldn't know.
I apologize for a third pass at it, because this part isn't even in the quote. Somebody wrote a check, or wired one, however it's done at that level, and somebody else had to take it and put it toward the flowers and the band and the tent, and everyone under that tent ate a dinner it paid for. I don't own a tent. I've never rented one. But I've stood at the toll plaza with exact change in my hand, watching the car ahead of me clear the gate on a transponder, and I think about that gate more than I should — not because it's the same thing, it isn't, but because both of them are about who gets waved through and who has to dig for the coins.
In late August, the President was asked whether Putin would attack NATO territory. "I've had good talks with Putin," he said. "He's not going to be attacking a NATO territory." That same week, asked whether he'd punish Russia over its dealings with Iran, he said it depends. Confidence in one breath, a shrug in the next. I'm not the one who has to reconcile those. I just write down what's in front of me.
I know I keep going back to this, and I promise it's the last pass. The letter that went out Friday asks why the invitation went to Putin. Does it ask anything about who paid for the wedding in May?
One more thing, if you don't mind — I know I said I was finished. Seven senators are asking, in writing, why the President invited a man his own family has already discussed. Is the answer already on file, from September 14th, in Bettina Trump's own words? Fortunate to have wonderful friends.
🍺
“They didn't write that letter because they're confused, they wrote it because they already have the receipt — the same family now asking "why Putin" let a Kremlin-linked guy pay for a wedding back in May and called him a friend on the record. That's not diplomacy, that's a family with a benefactor, and the schedule of a nuclear power is riding on it.”
“Inviting Putin to the G20 is just basic statecraft, you sit the major players at the table — and as for the wedding, rich families have rich friends, that's not a scandal, that's a guest list — I mean, a Kremlin-linked guest list, did I just say that part out loud? That's not really the line I wanted to run with.”
A group of senators, including seven Republicans, sent an open letter to President Trump on Friday to express “serious concern” and press him to explain why he invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to attend the Group of 20 Leaders’ Summit in Miami later this year amid Russia’s war with Ukraine. “Given President Putin’s continued…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.
