Trump calls for Russia’s reinstatement, adding to G-7 summit tensions

‘Why are we having a meeting without Russia being in the meeting?’

WASHINGTON – Amid an escalating confrontation with American allies, President Donald Trump said Friday that Russia should be reinstated into the Group of 7 nations as he left the White House to attend the summit of the major economic powers in Canada.

“Now, I love our country. I have been Russia’s worst nightmare,” Trump told reporters on the South Lawn before departing for Joint Base Andrews for the flight to Quebec. “But with that being said, Russia should be in this meeting. Why are we having a meeting without Russia being in the meeting?”

Russia was expelled from the G-7 after Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and actions to otherwise destabilize Ukraine. Subsequently, U.S. intelligence agencies concluded it has interfered in the 2016 presidential election, and Trump’s campaign is currently under criminal investigation for possible collusion with Russia.

European Council President Donald Tusk, who wrote in The New York Times this week that the G-7 nations must stay together despite Trump’s “unfortunate and worrying” actions, splashed cold water on his call to reinstate Russia during a news conference in Quebec prior to Trump’s arrival.

“Let’s leave seven as it is,” Tusk said. “It’s a lucky number.”

The president’s comment further strained relations between the U.S. and its closest allies, many of whom have taken a more confrontational public posture toward Trump in recent days after his decision to impose steel and aluminum tariffs on Canada, Mexico and the European Union. Tensions were already simmering over Trump’s abandonment of the Paris climate accord and the multinational Iran nuclear deal.

Trump’s trade fight with longtime allies has drawn uncommon attention to the usually sleepy annual G-7 summit, even as he prepares for his much more anticipated meeting on Tuesday in Singapore with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, the first such encounter between an American president and a North Korean leader.

Now the G-7 conference stands to be one of the most consequential in the 45 years since the world’s major powers formed their economic alliance in response to the Arab oil embargo – and for a once-unthinkable reason: the estrangement of the United States from its closest allies, even as Trump openly advocates for Russia and its leader, Vladimir Putin.

The White House announced late Thursday that Trump would leave the summit early on Saturday, but he also arrived late after delaying his departure from Washington, partly for a lengthy exchange with reporters outside the Oval Office. That forced the postponement of a planned bilateral meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron, with whom Trump has traded Twitter taunts this week.

White House aides said they were working to reschedule that meeting for later in the day.

Tusk, in prepared remarks opening the summit before Trump arrived, warned that the new G-7 divide plays into Putin’s hands, though he did not mention the Russian president by name.

“It is clear that the U.S. president and the rest of the group continue to disagree on trade, climate change and the Iran nuclear deal,” Tusk said. “What worries me most, however, is the fact that the rulesbased international order is being challenged, quite surprisingly, not by the usual suspects but by its main architect and guarantor, the U.S.”

“Naturally, we cannot force the U.S. to change their minds,” Tusk continued. “At the same time, we will not stop trying to convince our American friends and President Trump that undermining this order makes no sense at all, because it would only play into the hands of those who seek a new post-west order where liberal democracy and its fundamental freedoms would cease to exist.”