Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with President Donald Trump at the G-20 Summit on July 7 in Hamburg. | Evan Vucci/AP Trump slams 'dishonest' media over 'sick' reports of Putin exchange

President Donald Trump bashed news outlets for covering a previously unreported exchange between himself and Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G-20 summit in Germany earlier this month, claiming outlets are "becoming more and more dishonest" in their White House coverage.

"The Fake News is becoming more and more dishonest!" he said in a series of posts on Twitter on Tuesday evening. "Even a dinner arranged for top 20 leaders in Germany is made to look sinister!"


Trump called the media's coverage of the conversation "sick."

Various outlets, including The Associated Press and The New York Times, reported Tuesday that Trump had spoken with Putin a second time during the summit, an exchange that went undisclosed by the White House.

Trump, White House press secretary Sean Spicer told AP, spoke with the Russian leader during the world leaders' dinner in Hamburg, a conversation that occurred after their highly anticipated formal meeting that day. That meeting drew widespread media coverage, in large part due to ongoing congressional federal probes into potential ties between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.

According to AP, it was unclear how long Trump and Putin spoke during their second encounter in Hamburg.

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The second conversation was first reported by Ian Bremmer of the Eurasia Group during an interview with Charlie Rose on Bloomberg. Bremmer said the two spoke for nearly an hour.

In a statement, a White House official cast the conversation as commonplace and dismissed the idea that anyone had tried to hide the encounter. The official said Trump spoke through a Russian translator because each world leader was allowed only one translator, and his translator spoke Japanese. Trump was seated next to the wife of the Japanese prime minister during the dinner.

According to the official, Trump spoke with Putin, who was seated next to first lady Melania Trump, toward the end of the dinner.

The Trump White House has been rocked by controversy in recent weeks as details of a meeting between his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., several other Trump campaign officials and a Kremlin-connected lawyer emerged.