Trump unloads after a disciplined week
On his best behaviour across Asia, president finally rants on Twitter
For the past week on the road, US President Donald Trump had been measured, disciplined and studiously scripted as he picked his way through the geopolitical minefields of Asia.
Then came the weekend.
In a stream of tweets on Sunday, the president said those who wanted to investigate his ties to Russia were “haters and fools”, ridiculed “crooked” Hillary Clinton’s ill-fated effort to reset relations with Russia and fired back at North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un for calling him old, saying that he could call Kim “short and fat” — but had restrained himself.
That followed a freewheeling session with reporters on Air Force One on Saturday, in which Mr Trump dismissed the Russia investigation as a Democratic “hit job” and derided as “political hacks” three former chiefs of the nation’s intelligence agencies, all three of which concluded that Russia had meddled in the 2016 presidential election.
It was hard to say what prompted the sudden change in the president’s demeanour, though the first lady, Melania, who often plays a moderating influence on her husband, dropped off the trip in Beijing, after visiting the Great Wall of China and stroking the paw of a panda at the Beijing Zoo.
Mr Trump, 71, could also simply be tired, though his aides insist he is not, even if the people around him are.
Pressed again on Sunday about whether he believed President Vladimir Putin’s denials that Russia had intervened, Mr Trump seemed to walk back his earlier comments somewhat. He said he did not dispute the assessment of the intelligence agencies that Moscow had interfered.
“As to whether I believe it or not, I’m with our agencies, especially as currently constituted, with their leadership,” Mr Trump said at a news conference with Vietnam’s president, Tran Dai Quang. “I believe in our agencies. I’ve worked with them very strongly.”
Still, Mr Trump’s endorsement was grudging — he noted that the assessment reflected only four agencies, not 17 — and he repeated his assertion that Washington needed to move on from the Russia investigation to cooperate with the Russians on issues from North Korea to Syria.
“What I believe is, we have to get to work,” he said. “It’s now time to get back to healing a world that is shattered and broken.”
In the short run, Mr Trump’s comments broke with a narrative that the White House had carefully constructed during this 12-day trip — that of a statesman marshalling a worldwide coalition to confront a nuclear North Korea, and a populist leader working to right trade imbalances.
The president’s tweets and comments also complicated life for White House officials, who had been encouraged by his friendly meetings with the leaders of Japan, China and South Korea and by what they characterised as one of the most effective foreign-policy speeches of his presidency, on the need to confront a nuclear North Korea.
Speaking to reporters in Hanoi on Sunday, the White House chief of staff, John Kelly, insisted that he did not pay attention to Mr Trump’s tweets or allow his staff to be distracted by them.
“They are what they are,” Mr Kelly said. “But in preparation for this trip, we did the staff work, got him ready to go and then at each place we brief him up on whatever the next event is and all that. The tweets don’t run my life; good staff work runs it.”
Until Sunday, Mr Trump had been careful not to make things personal with Mr Kim. But after his speech in Seoul, in which he catalogued the brutality of the Kim government, North Korea described him as a “lunatic old man” and urged Americans to force him out of office or face an “abyss of doom”.
That prompted an indignant response from Mr Trump, who seemed more offended by the gibe about his age than about his mental condition. Shortly before leaving his hotel to meet the Vietnamese president, he tweeted, “Why would Kim Jong Un insult me by calling me ‘old’ when I would NEVER call him ‘short and fat?’ Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend.”
Once at the Presidential Palace, however, Mr Trump seemed to have got over it. Asked whether he could see himself becoming friends with Mr Kim, he said: “Strange things happen in life. That might be a strange thing to happen, but it’s certainly a possibility.”
“If that did happen,” he continued, “it would be a good thing for — I can tell you — for North Korea. But it would also be good for the world.”
Mr Trump’s comments were in keeping with his hot-and-cold approach to Mr Kim. At times, he has floated the idea of a meeting with Mr Kim and praised the North Korean leader for consolidating power in his country at a young age. But he has also ridiculed him as “Little Rocket Man”.
The president is closing out his Asia trip with a visit to the Philippines, where he is to meet with President Rodrigo Duterte. In anticipation of Mr Trump’s arrival, leftist activists, rights groups and students protested on Sunday in the streets of the Philippines.
“His first Asian visit is turning out to be preposterous, cringeworthy and a disaster waiting to happen for Southeast Asia people,” said a farmers’ group called Union of Agricultural Workers. It called Mr Duterte the US’ “main puppet in Asia”.
Both Mr Trump and Duterte met earlier in the trip in Da Nang, Vietnam, where they shook hands at a dinner hosted by the Philippine leader. “It’s not an official meeting, but they saw each other,” said the Philippine foreign secretary, Alan Peter Cayetano.
“We believe it will strengthen the relationship.”