TRUMP TO CONGRESS: WE’RE JUST STARTING
Global affairs in focus with Syria, Asia as top concerns
President Trump fired off a letter to Congress yesterday vowing to take “additional action” in Syria on the heels of a high-profile missile attack that has strained relations between the U.S. and Russia as the Pentagon probes whether the Kremlin played a role in the brutal chemical weapons assault that prompted the strikes.
In a letter to Congress, Trump stressed he “acted in the vital national security and foreign policy interests of the United States, pursuant to my constitutional authority to conduct foreign relations” and as commander in chief and chief executive.
He also said the U.S. “will take additional action, as necessary and appropriate, to further its important national interests.”
And as Trump defended the decision to hammer the Shayrat air base with cruise missiles Thursday night, the Trump administration signaled the attack on the military base — which was the staging site for a chemical weapons attack that killed dozens of men, women and children in Syria — would be followed by additional sanctions.
Although much of the international community rallied behind Trump’s decision to launch the first attack against the government of President Bashar Assad, a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that the strikes dealt “a significant blow” to relations between Moscow and Washington.
In an interview set to air tomorrow on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Russians were not targeted by the strikes. He also said the top U.S. priority in the region hasn’t changed and remained the defeat of Islamic State militants.
The U.S. airstrikes almost certainly got the attention of another adversary — North Korea — following the first talks between President Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping.
As the pair met at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., reports surfaced that the Trump administration is weighing whether or not to place U.S. nukes in South Korea or assassinate the rogue nation’s brutal dictator, Kim Jong Un, in response to the country’s relentless nuclear ambitions and unapproved missile launches.
North Korea has long claimed that the United States is preparing to conduct similar precision strikes against its territory or even launch an all-out invasion.
The international dust-up over the missile strikes comes as the Trump administration is pushing back against rumors of a West Wing shake-up prompted by the growing rivalry between his powerful son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner and chief strategist Steve Bannon.
In a statement, Trump spokeswoman Lindsay Walters dismissed reports of a dysfunctional administration on the verge of a makeover as “a completely false story.”
“The only thing we are shaking up is the way Washington operates as we push the president’s aggressive agenda forward,” she said.