Video Surfaces Of Putin And Assad Laughing About Trump Inside A Syrian Church

A video has surfaced of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad and Russian President Vladimir Putin laughing about President Donald Trump during Putin’s surprise visit to Damascus last week, reports Axios.

The short 20-second video, originally posted by a journalist for the Komsomolskaya Pravda, shows Assad and Putin joking that Trump should follow in the footsteps of the apostle Paul and visit the Syrian capital of Damascus.

“If Trump arrives along this road [to Damascus], everything will become normal with him too,” Assad said during a visit to the Orthodox Church of the Virgin Mary in Damascus, according to a translation of the conversation posted by Axios.

Putin laughs and tells Assad: “It will be repaired … invite him. He will come.”

After Assad responded that he was ready for a visit with such a changed version of Trump, Putin responds, smiling: “I will tell him.”

The inspiration for the joke comes from the biblical story of the Apostle Paul, who was a persecuted Christians. In the Book of Acts, Paul was struck blind by Jesus as he was on his way to Damascus to bring any Christians he found “bound” back to Jerusalem. Once he arrived in Damascus, he was baptized and regained his sight before going on to preach Jesus’ message.

The viral clip comes just over a month after multiple NATO nation leaders, including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and French President Emmanuel Macron, were recorded mocking Trump at a NATO summit.

During a Buckingham Palace reception for the December NATO summit, Trudeau joked that Trump was “late because he takes a 40-minute press conference off the top,” to a laughing U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Macron.

Trump had held an impromptu 40-minute press conference earlier in the day in which he tangled with Macron over whether France would accept some “nice ISIS fighters” who came from Europe and were captured in Syria.

.@JustinTrudeau, @EmmanuelMacron, @BorisJohnson and other VIPs shared a few words at a Buckingham Palace reception Tuesday. No one mentions @realDonaldTrump by name, but they seem to be discussing his lengthy impromptu press conferences from earlier in the day. (Video: Host Pool) pic.twitter.com/dVgj48rpOP

— Power & Politics (@PnPCBC) December 3, 2019

“You just watched his team’s jaws drop to the floor,” Trudeau later added.

Trump later called Trudeau “two-faced” and canceled a news conference he had planned in London.