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Svideteli Putina
2020
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Was Bill Clinton's 1994 meeting with Boris Yeltsin the most hilariously awful state visit in history?
Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin had a weird relationship. There was the time the Russian president gave the U.S. president a pair of hockey jerseys that said “Yeltsin 96” and “Clinton 96.” There was also the time Clinton doubled over laughing when Yeltsin called the U.S. press “a disaster” at a press conference.
But perhaps the weirdest incident in their professional relationship was when Yeltsin got drunk and wandered into the street in his underwear, trying to get a pizza.
The incident happened during Yeltsin and Clinton’s first meeting in Washington in September 1994. Although there were glancing media reports about it over the years, it wasn’t widely reported on until 2009, when author Taylor Branch published his book The Clinton Tapes, based on his interviews with the president.
Bill Clinton
“Secret Service agents discovered Yeltsin alone on Pennsylvania Avenue, dead drunk, clad in his underwear, yelling for a taxi,” Branch wrote in his book. “Yeltsin slurred his words in a loud argument with the baffled agents. He did not want to go back into Blair House, where he was staying. He wanted a taxi to go out for pizza.”
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- Becky Little
- 3 min
Oct 8, 2018 · Yeltsin was standing all by himself on Pennsylvania Avenue, drunk out of his mind, in his briefs and t-shirt (and nothing else), yelling for a taxi. When the agents tried to reason with him, Yeltsin told them that he did not want to go back to Blair House — he wanted a pizza. Now.
- 4 min
Sep 21, 2009 · By GLENN THRUSH. 09/21/2009 09:28 AM EDT. USA Today's Susan Page gets an advance on Taylor Branch's new book, culled from dozens of secret interviews with Bill Clinton. Here's the showstopper:...
Sep 22, 2009 · Former Russian president Boris Yeltsin got so drunk during a visit to Washington that he was found standing outside the White House in his underpants trying to hail a cab to go and buy a...
Yeltsin's problems with alcohol were well-known and the national and international media assumed that he had been too drunk to disembark from the plane (although in 2010, Tatyana Yumasheva, Yeltsin's daughter, suggested that her father had suffered a heart attack on the plane).
Sep 23, 2009 · Russian leader Boris Yeltsin was once found near the White House late at night dressed in his underwear, seemingly drunk and looking for pizza, according to a new book detailing Bill Clinton's presidency.
