Trump damns EU, f lies to meet Putin
United States President Donald Trump denounced the European Union (EU) as a greater ‘‘foe’’ than Russia and China yesterday as he left behind a trail of bruised allies and flew into Helsinki for a high-stakes summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Asked who was his biggest global foe Trump picked the EU, underlining his unease with traditional allies and his admiration for authoritarian figures such as Putin. ‘‘I think the European Union is a foe, what they do to us in trade. Now you wouldn’t think of the European Union but they’re a foe.
‘‘Russia is a foe in certain respects,’’ he added, and ‘‘China is a foe economically ... but that doesn’t mean they are bad.’’
Trump insisted that he was not discounting other adversaries but ‘‘the EU is very difficult’’, he said, accusing the bloc of unfair trade practices.
The remarks further unsettled European allies as Trump and Putin prepared to meet in the Finnish capital, scene of historic Soviet-American summits during the Cold War.
Trump sent nerves jangling at the Nato summit in Brussels last week as he indicated that he was prepared to consider recognising Russia’s annexation of Crimea and whether to continue Nato military exercises in the Baltic states.
His comments on the EU came in a CBS News interview at his Turnberry golf estate in southwest Scotland where he has spent two days preparing for Helsinki, as well as playing golf each day and giving several interviews.
Trump told the TV channel that he had not considered asking Putin to extradite 12 Russian intelligence agents charged on Friday with hacking Hillary Clinton and America’s Democratic Party with the goal of influencing the election in his favour. He has said he will raise the issue with Putin in Helsinki but has previously claimed he believed the Russian leader’s denials.
He blamed the Democratic National Committee for the attacks, saying they ‘‘should be ashamed of themselves for allowing themselves to be hacked’’, adding that it happened on ‘‘Barack Obama’s watch’’. He has said the same about the annexation of Crimea, refusing to denounce the Kremlin for it.
Democrats have expressed concern about the meeting, which will begin with an extended one-to-one session between Mr Trump and Putin.
Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said the arrangement was at the White House’s request and that only translators would be present. ‘‘That is what the American side proposed and we are polite people so we have agreed.’’
Mark Warner, the most senior Demcrat on the Senate intelligence committee, would ‘‘feel much better if there were other Americans in the room’’.
‘‘We know that Trump doesn’t do a lot of prep work for these meetings. He kind of goes in and wings it.’’
He noted Putin’s advantage as an experienced leader and former KGB agent.
The scale of preparation for the summit is highly unusual. John Bolton, the national security adviser, has travelled only once to Moscow for pre-summit discussions. When he tried to pin the Russians down on what ‘‘deliverables’’ might result, they told him that the meeting itself was the deliverable, The New Yorker reported. - The Times